The changing role of women
Women Before the First World War
In 1910, the lives of most American women were shaped by narrow social expectations. Married middle-class women were expected to manage the home and raise children. Working-class women often laboured in factories or domestic service but had no political voice. Women could not vote in federal elections. The suffrage movement had been campaigning since the 1840s, winning the vote in some western states, but federal suffrage remained elusive. Alongside the suffrage campaign, progressive women were active in social reform — campaigning against child labour, for better working conditions and for public health improvements.
The progressive era (roughly 1890 to 1920) saw women take on expanding public roles. Organisations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union gave women a platform for political action outside formal politics. Women like Jane Addams, founder of Hull House in Chicago, pioneered social work and urban reform. By 1910, women were already in the workforce in significant numbers — as teachers, nurses, secretaries and factory workers — though they were systematically paid less than men.
The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified on 18 August 1920, gave women the right to vote in all federal elections. It was a major political landmark, the result of seventy years of campaigning. However, it did not remove racial barriers: Black women in the South were systematically prevented from voting by the same Jim Crow laws and intimidation that blocked Black men.
The First World War and Women’s Work
The entry of the United States into the First World War in April 1917 opened new opportunities for women. With millions of men in uniform, women moved into jobs previously closed to them: working in munitions factories, on the railways and in offices. Approximately 11,000 women served in the US Navy in non-combat roles. This direct contribution to the war effort strengthened the argument that women deserved the vote. When the war ended, many women were pushed out of their wartime jobs as returning soldiers reclaimed them, but the experience of wartime work had permanently changed expectations.
The most iconic image of the 1920s woman was the flapper. Flappers were typically young, urban and middle-class. They wore short skirts (above the knee), cut their hair in a short “bob,” wore make-up, smoked cigarettes and drank cocktails in speakeasies. They danced the Charleston and the Black Bottom. They drove cars and attended college in increasing numbers. The flapper represented a deliberate rejection of the Victorian ideal of the modest, domestic “angel in the house.”
Jazz culture was central to the flapper lifestyle. The speakeasy, the cinema, the radio and the gramophone all gave young women new social spaces and new freedoms. Hollywood glamorised the flapper image through films starring actresses like Clara Bow, who was marketed as the “It Girl” and became one of the biggest stars of the decade. Fashion magazines spread the flapper look nationwide.
The flapper lifestyle represented real but limited change. It was largely restricted to young, urban, white, middle-class women. The majority of American women — working-class, rural, Black, immigrant — did not live like flappers. Most women still worked in low-paid domestic or clerical jobs and faced significant inequality in wages and career opportunities.
Margaret Sanger and Birth Control
One of the most controversial women of the decade was Margaret Sanger. Sanger had been campaigning for women’s access to birth control since the 1910s, arguing that women could not be truly free until they could control their own reproduction. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which later became Planned Parenthood. Her work was controversial: contraception was still illegal in many states, and she was prosecuted multiple times. However, by the late 1920s, birth control clinics were operating in several major cities, and middle-class women were increasingly able to access contraception.
The changes in women’s lives during the 1920s provoked strong reactions. Religious fundamentalists and conservative commentators condemned flappers as immoral and dangerous to family life. Many states considered legislation to restrict short skirts or bobbed hair. The Ku Klux Klan explicitly campaigned to return women to their “proper place” in the home. Some women themselves were critical of the flapper, arguing that it prioritised fashion and pleasure over serious feminist goals.
By 1930, many of the freedoms associated with the flapper had retreated. The Great Depression made survival a priority; spending on fashion and entertainment collapsed; and conservative social attitudes reasserted themselves. Women were urged to give up jobs to men. The 1920s represented a partial and uneven change: significant for those who lived through it, but far from a complete revolution in women’s status.