Women in the 1920’sWomen in the 1920’s

Curator’s Office

Women at Home

The Changing

Role of Women

Women at Work

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Mrs. Wakefield

I have taught Social Studies for the past 11 years and enjoying challenging my students. Technology is an important part of learning today therefore, you will be creating one of these in class soon!!

Women at WorkWomen at Work

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Women at HomeWomen at Home

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Entrance

Changing Roles of WomenChanging Roles of Women

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Orphans and homelessness

Mothers, both married and unmarried, unable to care for infants, often left then on the steps of hospitals. Since the mid 19th c., abandoned children in NYC has been sent west to become adopted by new families. This program was called the “orphan train,” after the trains that moved west carrying children to their new adoptive families. Up to 90,000 children were sent west by the time the program ended in the 1920’s. Often this was the only one option for women to care for their children as economic conditions led to homelessness.

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Women’s fashion

The 1920s saw the emergence of three major women's fashion magazines: Vogue, The Queen, and Harper's Bazaar. Vogue was first published in 1892, but its up-to-date fashion information did not have a marked impact on women's desires for fashionable garments until the 20's. These magazines provided mass exposure for popular styles and fashions.

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Changing fashion of women

The feminine liberation movement had a strong effect on women's fashions. Most importantly, the corset was discarded! For the first time in centuries, women's legs were seen. A more masculine look became popular, including flattened breasts and hips, and bobbed hair. During the early 1920s, waistlines were at the waist, but were loose and not fitted. Women wore suits with long hemlines and somewhat full skirts, often with belts at the waist of the jackets. Dress and suit bodices alike were worn loose, even baggy.

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Grandma helps out

Grandparents step in to help with the children during the war while women enter the workforce in greater numbers. After the war, they gained the vote, and other measures of legal and political equality. Slowly a greater variety of jobs became open to them. People began to accept the idea that a woman could pursue a career separate from her role as a wife and mother.

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Making their mark in aviation

• 1921 - Adrienne Bolland is the first woman to fly over the Andes

• 1921 - Bessie Coleman becomes the first African American, male or female, to earn a pilot's license

• 1922 - Lillian Gatlin is the first woman to fly across America as a passenger

• 1928 - June 17 - Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly across the Atlantic -- Lou Gordon and Wilmer Stultz did most of the flying

• 1929 - August - first Women's Air Derby is held, and Louise Thaden wins, Gladys O'Donnell takes second place and Amelia Earhart takes third

• 1929 - Florence Lowe Barnes - Pancho Barnes - becomes the first woman stunt pilot in motion pictures (in "Hell's Angels")

• 1929 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots.

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Uniforms in the factory

Women who did find jobs, got paid very low salaries compared to men, and got very few hours. They were able to find jobs as school teachers, or in factories if they were lucky.

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Women in FilmIn the 20s, women in film sat at

the top of the food chain with nary a shark bite, occupying niches equal in the hierarchy with men. In the years 1912 to 1920, female stars controlled about twenty film companies. Women often worked as film editors and cinematographers. The female stars of short films often managed their own production companies and wrote, produced, and directed the films in which they starred.

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Women in the workplaceBetween 1910 and 1920, Connecticut

experienced a 19.9 percent growth in the number of women employed with a concurrent population increase of 23.9 percent, and a growth of 19.8 percent in the entire work force. However, it is clear that the increased number of women in the work force did not expand disproportionately with the growth in population. It is also true that the women workers did not take over many skilled or high paying “male jobs.”

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Women in the kitchenThe availability of natural gas

and electricity to homes brought about changes. Most city dwellers would have had electricity by the 1920's, but rural farm homes would still be using kerosene lamps for light, a wood stove for cooking or perhaps a kerosene stove like the one on the right hand wall here in the display. Gas stoves and a wood icebox would have been found in the city.

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Women’s clothing

Women shed the heavy, cumbersome clothing. Skirts no longer brushed the ground; some even rose above the knees. A typical woman’s dress in 1928 had seven yards of cloth compared with nineteen at the beginning of the century.

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Hairstyles and CosmeticsIn the 1920’s, the “bob” was

the in hairstyle; hair was cut about mid-neck length and then curled with curling irons, or set into a “permanent wave.”

Cosmetics like lipstick, eye liner, and face powder emerged for the first time. Unfortunately the science did not catch up with the demand and in the early years cosmetics used toxic chemicals, which could cause burns or scars.

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Getting the important information

An invention, which soon after became a popular fad, is the radio. Because of no invention of the TV, the radio was their TV. And, it really did do pretty much everything the TV does for us. If you tuned in at the right time, you could catch comedy shows, news, live events, jazz, variety shows, drama, opera, you name it, the radio had it!

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New styles in swimwear

Although there were plenty of rule-breakers, men's and women's swimsuits remained cumbersome overall until late in the 1920s. Mimicking streamlined '20s fashion, women's swimsuits became tighter sleeveless tank-style suits that stopped mid-thigh.

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Political activism

In August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution achieved ratification by the required number of states and became law. It had taken more than seventy years of determined effort starting with the first organized women’s rights conference, at Seneca Falls, NY.

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Flappers of the ’20sThe flapper was the heroine of the Jazz Age.

With short hair and a short skirt, with turned-down hose and powdered knees - the flapper must have seemed to her mother like a rebel. The typical flapper was a young women who was often thought of as a little fast and maybe even a little brazen. Mostly, the flapper offended the older generation because she defied conventions of acceptable feminine behavior. The flapper was "modern." Traditionally, women's hair had always been worn long. The flapper wore it short, or bobbed and she used make-up. The flapper wore baggy dresses which often exposed her arms as well as her legs from the knees down.

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Women and shopping

The early twentieth centuries were the age of the independent mom-and-pop store. As residents moved into the suburbs created by the new street railways and railroads, small family-run stores sprang up to meet their needs. These new groceries, meat markets, vegetable stands, and bakeries typically reflected the ethnic demographics of the neighborhood. It was the women’s job to do the daily shopping.

• http://www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/• http://www.murrayontravel.com/carolnolan/fashionhistory_1920ladies.html• http://womenshistory.about.com/od/aviationpilots/a/av_timeline.htm• http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/cthistory/81.ch.07.x.html#d• http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/554.html

• Life and Times in 20th Century America series #1 and #2• David, Shannon; Between the Wars: America 1919 – 1941; 2nd edition,

1979• Kallen, Stuart A. (ed.); The Roaring Twenties; 2002• Time Life Books; The Fabulous Century Vol. III, 1969