Propaganda & Mass Persuasion: Gender roles and the war

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Gender roles and the war

"The wartime employment of women led to a more radical redefinition of female roles for an audience most likely to have remained in the home...Women played the important role of peacetime virtues and family life, which came to be equated with security, stability and prosperity." (Honey, 7)


During the war, women were asked to take the place of their men, to do their jobs and support the men at war. At the same time, they were still running the household and expected to do so. During and after the war, women were seen as a safety. Soldiers had a vision of women as caretakers with traditional values and after the war, the women were expected to go back home and preserve family life. People were searching for some form of stability and normalcy, and soon there came the desire to restore family values and the traditional home life.

1 Comments:

Blogger A. Mattson said...

A very good post.

You have hit on the key point of this reading. Women were portrayed as going to work on the assembly line in order to defend America and the tradition idea of the American family and traditional American gender roles. Go to work to defend your right to stay home and be a wife and mother. This was only superficially campaign of women's empowerment.

3/22/2008 10:38 PM  

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