History 281--Handout for Second Essay Assignment Answer one of the questions below in a typed, double-spaced, 3-4 page essay. Be sure to build your answer using evidence (material from the lectures an

Gender Crisis in the 1920s?

This course unit covers the debates about gender during the 1920s. These debates (which are the subject of your readings for this unit) mostly took place among European conservatives, who were upset or concerned about changes in women’s roles that they saw around them in the period after WWI. Liberal or politically progressive people were NOT so upset about these changes, so they generally did not dominate this discussion (which was carried out in newspapers, magazines, novels, theater pieces, etc.). So, you should bear in mind while you do the readings that certainly not ALL Europeans were concerned about the changes in gender roles that followed WWI, but that traditionally-minded people, religious people, and conservatives certainly were. It is their voices that you largely hear, in these readings.

While it was mostly the Right that was upset or angered, the changes were not only in their own minds: they did exist. The 1920s witnessed some shifts in women’s political rights, occupational patterns, in how women dressed, and in how they were portrayed in popular culture. So, this unit first summarizes briefly some of these changes, and then moves to introduce what the reactions of conservatives were to these changes.

First, most European nations saw significant changes in women’s political rights. In most European nations (as in the USA) women were given the right to vote, and almost achieved equality in most other civil and political rights as well. The exceptions to this rule where the Catholic nations of France, Italy, and Spain, where women were NOT given the right to vote until 1945. But in most other nations, they had achieved a formal (and superficial) political equality by 1918.

At the same time, this period witnessed a shift in women’s occupational patterns. It’s not that the percentage of women in the labor force changed very much, in most nations. For most of this period, women’s labor force rates were static. But the kinds of jobs that women did changed somewhat, with the result that women’s work was more “visible” to the public. As a result, there was an erroneous (but widespread) impression that the number of women employed outside the home had grown enormously.

Before WWI, the main areas in which women were employed were as servants (in the homes of bourgeois families); in the textile industries or in other sorts of clothing production; or in food production of various sorts. After WWI, many of these areas of employment declined. Increasing numbers of bourgeois families could no longer afford servants, after WWI. And there were newer, more attractive areas of employment for working women, which younger women increasingly preferred to domestic service or to textile production. These newer areas of employment included: the rapid growth of all sorts of “office work” (typing, stenography, clerical work, telephone receptionist); the increased employment of women in retail sales (esp. as saleswomen in stores); and in factories of the socalled “light industries,” which made new consumer goods (small new electronic products like irons, or radios).

Thus, there was a decline in traditional women’s jobs, especially in the number of women employed as domestic servants and in Mom and Pop businesses. Women whose mothers had been servants for years (before they had married and had children) now preferred to become typists, instead. And at the same time, many of the “new jobs” were more public (certainly office work and retail sales put the women in a more “visible” position to the public than working as servants in private homes had. Since many of these new jobs more public and visible, there was therefore a perceived growth in number of women employed. Needless to say, this was NOT perceived as a positive development by conservatives or traditionally religious people.

A third change that was widely commented on during the 1920s was an alteration in women’s dress. For an image of what I’m talking about, please see the images posted in this unit’s folder. The new look here originated in the shortage of cloth for civilians during WWI, but this new fashion trend was clearly carried much further in terms of shorter hair length, and more widespread use of make-up, etc., after 1918. To us, this change in appearance might not be so startling, but you have to remember that European women had been wearing ankle-length skirts for over a thousand years. Before around 1910, it had been embarrassing if a woman’s ankles were seen when she go in and out of a carriage, etc. And traditionally, European women had not cut their hair ever: a woman’s hair was often so long that she could sit on it, when she let it down, at night. So, the shorter skirts and haircuts were strong (and potentially upsetting) symbolic changes to that generation: much more so than we might realize, today.

The new political rights, new jobs, and new appearance all worked in conjunction with each other to create a new stereotype of younger women, a stereotype sometimes referred to as “The New Woman.” The New Woman image symbolized a more modern image of femininity, someone who was more independent, and (in eyes of conservatives) someone who was possibly more sexually active, not traditional in terms of sexual morality. As you saw in the 19th century units, women were supposed to be demure, chaste, and lacking in sexual appetite (esp compared to men). But the New Woman stereotype often implied that these young women were in fact sexually active before marriage, and might even enjoy sex.

Such New Women images were ubiquitous in the popular culture of the 1920s (in movies and novels, esp). A visitor from another culture, who only looked at magazines, novels and movies might have (falsely) come to the conclusion that ALL European women were now dressing and acting like the “New Women” characters in popular culture. One famous example was the character of Monique Lebier, the heroine of a best-selling 1921 French novel, called La Garconne. This novel was translated into many European languages, and widely read. In it, the heroine (Monique) epitomized most of the traits of the “New Woman”: she wore shorter skirts, played tennis, smoked cigarettes, drove her own car, attended university, and even had sexual affairs (and was not punished for this with pregnancy, as would have always happened in a 19th century novel).

Historians and sociologists believe that such rapid changes in lifestyle and the workplace, in only one generation, coming on top of the shocks of the war, created considerable tensions and anxieties on the part of some people, particularly men and older people of both sexes. Much of the public discussions of the 1920s (as you will see in the readings for this unit) are about these rapid changes, but they used gender as a vocabulary, a set of images, to discuss anxieties about changes that are actually much more far-reaching: the image of the New Woman came to stand for ALL of the broader changes in lifestyle and culture associated with post-WWI modernity.

The “New Woman” image combined with tensions generated by gap in wartime experience to create enormous concern about gender roles, and women’s perceived independence and less dependent position vis-à-vis men. There was also here a discussion of youth (of young people) whose images were also used as vocabulary to process these anxieties. Many people had a sense that the control over young people that had existed in pre-War society had been loosened during the war (with fathers at front, and mothers working in “men’s” industries). Now, youths were prominent in many of recreations associated with modern consumer societies (going to movies at night; dancing in dance halls, etc.). Again, you see in these readings an anxiety about “unnaturally” independent youths, similar to anxieties about “unnaturally” independent women

One novelist who lived in Paris during the 1920s described nightlife in Paris by saying that “pencil thin, cigarette-wielding women swayed to the rhythms of jazz bands . . . untold quantities of wine and cocktails were consumed.” Another, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, (as you will see in this unit’s readings) wrote that French civilization had been driven mad by the war, it was now a “civilization without sexes” since the boundaries between femininity and masculinity had been so undermined by the war. He wrote of young French women during the 1920s that “

can one define la femme moderne? No, no more than the waistline on the dress she wears. Young girls today are difficult to locate precisely. If you wanted to be true to French tradition, it would be barbaric, in my opinion, to call our pretty Parisiennes “young girls.” These beings without breasts, without hips, without underwear, who smoke, argue, work, and fight exactly like boys, and who, during the night at the Bois de Bologne, with their heads swimming under several cocktails, seek out savory and acrobatic pleasures on the plush back seats of 7 horsepower Citroens, these aren’t young girls! No more young girls! No more women, either!

1925 French writer “The innocent young thing of yesterday has given way to the garconne of today. In this way as well, the war, like a devastating wind, has had an influence. Add to this sports, movies, dancing, cars---the unhealthy need to be always on the move---this entire Americanization of the old Europe, and you will have the secret of the complete upheaval of people and of things.”

These quotes capture a lot of what I’m talking about in this lecture, because they combine several aspects of modern consumer culture: the new gender images (a masculinized, because not so exaggeratedly feminine, female figure, who is active rather than passive—she has muscles, she dances, she has sexual desire), the new pastimes (dancing, movies), and new consumer goods (cocktails, jazz music, fast new cars, new fashions), and the idea that all of these changes together: in products, gender, and lifestyle, add up to something called “Americanization.”

But you have to be aware of the particular location, in social and political terms, of these anxious voices. Not everyone in 1920s Berlin, Vienna, London or Paris was this anxious about the changes in women’s roles. These anxious writers tended to be people on the Right, politically, particularly religious conservatives and nationalists. They also included people in rural areas, who tended to be more conservative and traditional, looked at the populations in the cities (esp. women and younger people) and shuddered at their “immorality”.

But to people who were rural, religious, traditional and/or politically conservative, the changes in women’s roles (and the greater independence now allegedly enjoyed by younger people) of the 1920s were deeply disturbing, and portended social decline. These anxieties, as we shall see, became an important part of the growing fascist movements, which were mobilizing during the 1920s to try to “put things right”, including “things” with women, gender, and the family.