Title: How Flappers of the Roaring Twenties Redefined Womanhood - HISTORY
Headings: How Flappers of the Roaring Twenties Redefined Womanhood
How Flappers of the Roaring Twenties Redefined Womanhood
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Content: Women move to cities and into the workforce, but stayed in traditional 'women’s roles.' The flapper was born out of a growing landscape in America. By 1920, for the first time in the nation’s history, more Americans (51 percent) were living in cities rather than in rural areas. As part of the nation's urbanization and economic growth, more and more women were entering the workforce. By 1929, more than a quarter of all women, and more than half of single women, were gainfully employed. For the most part, however, the increase of working women didn’t represent a challenge to traditional gender roles. Nearly a third of working women in the 1920s were domestic servants, while the rest were clerical workers, factory workers, store clerks and other “feminized” professions. “ Women are working, but they're working in what are called 'women's jobs,’” says Lynn Dumenil, professor emerita of history at Occidental College and author of The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I.
Even women who blazed a trail in politics faced barriers due to their gender: Most female officeholders worked primarily on what were seen as “women’s issues,” preventing them from acquiring too much power within their political parties.