Gender Roles After World War II

You may have heard the terms: man of the house, stay at home mom, housewife, and the working man. These terms stem from societal normality’s. They are terms that are used to describe gender roles. The classification of what is expected of the man or women. The domestic women and working man are ideals, some that are described in the late 1940s thru the 1950’s. Did the role of characters like June Cleaver just appear? Who said that women must stay at home with dinner ready and a pie in the oven for her family? Where did these standards come from?
After WWII, Gender roles were challenged, ideals were changed and standards were questioned. Could the war be a cause for these changes? This paper will evaluate men and women’s roles, ideals and standards
For Americans, the major event WWII, caused women to be proposed with a new opportunity. They could work in higher positions in jobs never offered before. The woman was encouraged to work and go to school. By doing so, she was doing her duty to fill in, while the men fought the war. Since women had these experiences they saw new opportunities. They saw a world in which they could have a career, set goals and the new idea of advancement. Although women did work before the war, they worked primarily “woman jobs” jobs such as secretaries, housekeepers, with little to no advancement opportunities.
Due to the war, women were given the opportunity to obtain jobs such as lawyers, doctors and higher positions in the military. Women still suffered from gender inequality as not all men approved of their competence. Such as in the movie Spell bound, a female doctor, Dr. Peterson’s co-workers don’t see her as an equal. One man, who seems to like her as a women, critics her work as a career women. He observes her with a patient and says:
MAN DR: You can't treat a love veteran like Carmichael without some inside information.
DR.P: I've done a great deal of research on emotional problems and love
Sounding as if they were making fun of her for doing the “Expected” as if the women is not “Man enough” for the career, that she is still just a woman looking for love and cannot be taken seriously. They act as if love is a distraction for her as a woman and that its either a career or love, not both.
She is a very patient caring woman, who helps the man she is falling in love as he has amnesia. She has had past patients with the same issue, she uses her knowledge to regain his memory. She proves that she is extremely intelligent by using her knowledge to help cure him, proving to her fellow doctors that she can be intelligent and in love.
When the men came back from war they wanted their jobs back and women were chastised even more. Historian Betty Friedan writer of The Feminine Mystique suggests that:

“Women were driven out of their jobs, due to the fields they chose to face hostility from the men and that there are unwritten laws of advancement belonging to men, and that to be a woman in these fields would be so much of a fight that women would just go home to a job that welcomed them…that after the war, many women did work, there were plenty of jobs, but the jobs that required training and that were actual professions besides, a factory job.”