https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o By Melody Hom & Cosette Monson en-us 2019-10-22 19:59:48 UTC 2025-10-09 06:02:30 UTC hello@padlet.com comonson100 https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401126698      ^{The societal expectations put on women during the 1930s through 1940s were focused on beauty and ability to take care of a household. Because of the Great Depression, they were also expected to work and earn money for their household while still looking attractive and fashionable. In one Good Housekeeping article, the author described the dilemma of a woman who came to her looking to improve her back so it would be more attractive to her male coworkers while she sat at her desk as a secretary. This prompted the author, Ruth Murrin, to discuss the importance of having an attractive back, “Just about half the time someone is judging us by our unconscious back.” (Murrin, 1933). This article is evidence of the emphasis put on beauty, as it was even prevalent in the workplace.
Women were expected to work at home as well. The beauty standard were still present in the household and enforced by many ads for women. Lisa Hix described these ads, “According to such ads, she might drive that man away with her so-called coarse pores, old mouth, tan lines, zits, wrinkles, middle-age skin, hairy legs or lip, visible veins, or horror of all horrors, dishpan hands.” (Hix 2019). Some of these “problems” were caused by doing housework, but women were still expected to keep their skin and pores perfect.} ]]> 2019-10-22 20:10:30 UTC https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401126698 mghom100 https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401126789   _{There were two consecutive crises that deeply impacted many people in the United States from the 1930-1940s. America has just entered the Great Depression in the 1930s, and World War 2 has just begun in the 1940s. This was a big time period for how women’s views and jobs in everyday life changed for the better. Women became more than someone who cooks and cleans at home, to visionaries, hard workers, and influencers. In the 1930s, although the Great Depression ended many jobs for men, many women stepped up to work because the stock market crash didn’t affect “women’s work” as much as the “mens”. Jessica Pearce Rotondi evaluated, “The main reason for women’s higher employment rates was the fact that the jobs available to women—so called ‘women’s work’— were in industries that were less impacted by the stock market” (Potondi, 2019). Women started to step up in the Great Depression becoming nurses, teachers, cleaners, and more. Although it was not much at the time, women began to step out of the house they were chained to by the stereotypes of America, and into the workplace to one day be equal to men. 
In the 1940s, America was fighting hard in World War 2 against Germany, Italy, and Japan. 
One writer, Allison McNearney, evaluated the jobs available for women at the time and “Over six million women joined the workforce by the end of the war, and by 1945, they made up almost 37 percent of the workforce, up from only 27 percent in 1940.”(McNearney, 2019). As the men of America needed to fight on the battle lines of the war, the women were left to help fight from home. Women’s jobs expanded to building the bomber planes, factories, writing, and more. Women were a big help to the win of World War 2 by supplying a fair amount of the equipment used to fight in the war. This opened new doors for women in the workplace, and women’s job opportunities grew even more. Although the crisis in the 1930-40s were excruciating, women stepped up and helped developed the country with all the work they did when men couldn’t.} ]]> 2019-10-22 20:10:45 UTC https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401126789 comonson100 https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401126806 _{Women in the workplace was a new concept for the men in charge in the 1930-40s, and it brought many challenges to women working for the first time. Just alone from the 1940s, six million new women workers entered the workforce with little background in working before hand. Working women had to be able to apply the skills they recently acquired, and perform well for the product they made, like bomber airplanes. Propaganda came for women to enter the workplace, even though it was a new experience which was an inconvenience for women to go through. A writer, Allison McNearney, restates a common type of propaganda that was used to have women enter the workforce: “If you’ve used an electric mixer in your kitchen, you can learn to run a drill press” (McNearney, 2019). Working new jobs was a major challenge that women had to go through to adjust to all the crises happening at the time. 
       With so many women entering the workplace, it became more difficult to find employment. The population of single women increased greatly, but many single women were banned from working so women with families could find jobs. Eventually, “As fewer and fewer women were able to find employment, the societal ideals that had embraced increasing female freedoms did an about-face. Domesticity, motherhood, and homemaking once again became regarded as the only truly proper and fulfilling roles for women.” (Rotondi 2019). Women went from the expectation of working in factories, again working in households.}]]> 2019-10-22 20:10:47 UTC https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401126806 comonson100 https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401723411 https://docs.google.com/document/d/19TsAx1b6UkjIj7ywIPbQ053jYiJXwRmQtYaZbjhYDzA/edit?usp=sharing ]]> 2019-10-23 20:34:38 UTC https://padlet.com/comonson100/bdlv8pvqdt3o/wish/401723411