(Part Two)

*Pre-WWI:
-most occupations defined as inappropriate for middle-class women
-some lower-middle-class women continued to work alongside their husbands like before, but most married middle-class women didn’t work
-maternal and housewifery roles justified by 19th c/ conception of women’s nature and capabilities (passive creatures who needed protection but also respected as morally superior, removed from contamination of competitive workday world – responsibility of caring for moral and spiritual needs of the fam)
-some occupations were accepted, explained in “how to” books – e.g. teachers, chemists/pharmacists
-Socialist women:
-1850-1914: many working-class women joined unions and working-class political organizations (as socialism became more popular in the last decades of the 19th c/, more and more working-class women attracted to socialist organizations)
-over time, more attention paid to women’s issues, and women gained leadership roles w/in socialist organizations
-1870s-1920s: improved standard of living, smaller family size, maternity benefits, protective legislation, unions, and new jobs

*WWI:
-with men off to war, a new labor force had to be trained (women and older men predominated)
-large numbers of women entering the labor force or changing jobs: for middle- and upper-class women (although not working-class women as much), war freed them from 19th c/ attitudes limiting work and personal life
-for working-class women in cities, growth of new white-collar job: one new trend which wouldn’t be reversed post-war (besides this mostly only temporary suspension of the normal conditions of work outside the home, and traditional patterns returned in the postwar era)

*WWII, Post-war:
-Germany:
-from the beginning, Nazi party: against any expansion of women’s political or economic roles (policy = to keep women in their own separate sphere as mothers and wives and remove them from the man’s sphere, aka jobs and politics)
-“children, church, and kitchen”
-however, many women supported the Nazi party and joined Nazi women’s organizations (e.g. Guida Diehl)
-1949, France: The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir (well-known French novelist, social critic, and existential philosopher)
-argues women have been forced into a position subordinate to men in many obvious and subtle ways
-stresses the status and role of woman as the “Other” in comparison to man

-1960s and 1970s: women’s struggle for change spread and took on a new militancy
--> women’s liberation movement
-e.g. A Feminist Manifesto (1969 by Redstockings, an organization of New York feminists)
-identify men as agents of women’s oppression