Role of women

• In 1936, Hitler introduced the 'Law for the Encouragement of Marriage' which gave financial loans to couples who married young
• Women were a crucial part of the Nazis Third Reich
• Children

  Were crucial to expand the German race and improve it into the aryan one
• Women ideals

  Kinder(children)

  Kuche(kitchen)

  Kirche(church)
• Rewards for having kids

  Married women could claim loans, after one kid they could claim 25% of it and so on.

  Bronze, silver or gold medals would be awarded depending on how many kids a women had, it displayed them as the ideal for those to respect
• They were trained and taught to be housewives and mothers, not to be working
• Work after WW1

  Women in work increased because of the war, then during economic crisis it remained high however Nazis banned and discouraged this
• Women out of work

  Caused problems to the economy and between 1937-1939 increased, especially in the lead up to WW2
• Laws for women

  Not allowed to wear makeup, heels or trousers

  Not allowed to smoke in public

  Discouraged from being slim

  There were certain expected styles like wearing your hair in plaits or buns, and wearing flat shoes
• Women’s attendance in motherhood groups increased massively
• League of German girls 


  Girls were trained to be the ideal of women
• 1933-1939


  Birth rates rose from 970,000 to 1,413,000
• ‘The law for the preventation of diseased offspring’


  Meant that women with history of mental illness, hereditary disease or anti-social behaviour may have been forcibly sterilised
• Contraception and abortion was banned
• In 1936, Hitler said ‘the woman who does not bear children is a criminal against the state’
• Nazi propaganda encouraged women to marry young and have lots of children
• Abortion was punishable by death if caught
• Mothers received financial support during pregnancy and maternity leave
• Hitler believed that women had no place in politics as they would only cause trouble