Key periods

• Civil war positive

  • Women experienced increasing participation in public affairs
  • Greater confidence
  • Brought changes to AA women
• Civil war negative

  • Some took new roles in activism and nursing and were excluded from decision making processes
  • Reinforced traditional gender roles
  • Deepened societal divisions with women‘s rights movements
• First world war positive

  • 19th Amendment
  • Meaningful change
• First world war negative

  • Women had to take on jobs but faced job losses at the end of the war
  • Many were forced to return to domestic roles pr accept lower paying jobs
• Second world war positive

  • female cooperation crucial
  • More working in male dominated jobs
  • Women worked in more skilled jobs
  • Increase in number of women in state legislatures 144 to 208
  • More women in Congress
• Second world war negative

  • Not involved in wartime decision making on hole front
  • Women expected to juggle domestic responsibilities and work
  • Conservative women’s groups reinforced by opposing greater support for equal opportunities
• Second world war negative 2

  • National Council of Negro Women - AA women had little opportunity to be consulted
  • After Pearl Harbor, Japanese American women faced discrimination
  • End of 1946- nearly 2 million women lost their jobs
  • Many were forced to accept lower paid and lower status jobs