Essay On The Role Of Women In Migrant Mother

The Great Depression not only brought financial hardship and economic disaster to the United States, it also psychologically changed the soul of our nation and rocked our spirit to the core. Despite the recent economic recession experienced by much of our nation, our country’s current situation is nowhere near the magnitude of the Great Depression. The desperation and misery felt by the country during the 1920s and 1930s is nearly impossible to grasp by today’s society, yet when looking at photographs such as “Migrant Mother” we are given a glimpse of the hardships that plagued the nation. The hopeless, weathered gaze of the woman in “Migrant Mother” served as a representation of the hopelessness felt by so many suffering mothers and families during the Great Depression.
This hopelessness
Some individuals viewed women who applied for aid or paid work as taking money and jobs away from more deserving men. Despite the opposition from men, women experienced a gain of two million jobs between 1930 and 1940. Women helped their families survive through their own fortitude and strength, despite all of the resistance they felt from men and societal expectations. As Eleanor Roosevelt said during the Great Depression in her book entitled It’s Up to the Women, “...it is [women’s] courage and determination which, time and again, have pulled us through worse crises than the present one.” (Ware par. 1) Without women, there is no doubt our nation would have suffered more at the hands of the Great Depression than it already did. Although the Great Depression brought pain and tragedy, it was certainly positive in its effect to help women begin to break the glass ceiling for the first time, as well as exemplify the inner strength in women that was previously suppressed as a result of confining gender