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Women Asserting Their Right To Equality Essay

Women Voting Rights The author of this report has been asked to offer a brief essay that centers on a few particular topics as it relates to women and their place and function within the suffrage movement as well as other pushes for equal rights including in the military, the workforce and so forth. The particular events and topics that will be touched upon will include women and work, women's new deal, working for victory: women and war, women in the military and working women in war time. While women are still facing equality-related struggles now, it was much worse for them in the 1800's and beyond and even into some of the 1900's.

When it comes to women and work, the reasons for their slow progress over the duration of the existence of the United States as well as beyond that is not hard to figure out. Indeed, women were subjugated in terms of what they were allowed to do, what power they were allowed to have, what money they were allowed to make or possess and so forth. So much of the progress that women have realized has been a matter of necessity and convenience for the men that have been controlling them. Indeed, when all of the men went off for war, someone had to fill the void left behind and women were more than willing to fill that void. Beyond that, women eventually started to assert that they wanted to be in the military alongside their male peers under the auspices of equality and equal opportunity. Even with that not being allowed for a long time, women have had an unquestionable place in the war efforts of American history even if those contributions were stunted at the time and even though they are still to this day not given the reverence and recognition that they deserve (Landdeck, 2016).

Women were largely ignored or passed over with the debate and passage of the New Deal during the FDR administration. Things started to change, however, during World War I and World War II, the latter in particular. People might not know her by name, but most people should be familiar with the "Rosie the Riveter" cartoon that shows a woman with a red bandana and a denim-colored shirt flexing her bicep and saying "we can do it." Indeed, the efforts of women were absolutely needed during World War II because so many of the men were off to fight in one of the war's theaters and women had to step in and do the adult-level things that the men were no longer present to manage and complete....

This all was to the extent that women would work in factories, shipyards and in munitions factors. These were all things that were normally dominated by men and women were rarely (if ever) present (History, 2016).
Conclusion

There are many debates that still rage on when it comes to women. These include whether the standards for entry into some military jobs should be flexed due to women being smaller and less muscular and whether women should be allowed in front-line combat groups such as infantry and the like. There are also persistent sexual harassment and sexual assault accusations that keep coming up. Even so, women (and even LGBT people, nowadays) are making more progress by the day and that would seem to be on its way to continue.

References

History. (2016). Rosie the Riveter - World War II - HISTORY.com. HISTORY.com. Retrieved 12 June 2016, from http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/rosie-the-riveter

Landdeck, K. (2016). The Women Excluded From Arlington National Cemetery. The Atlantic. Retrieved 12 June 2016, from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/women-world-war-two-veterans-arlilngton/424158/

Part II -- Question A It is clear that over the course of American history and beyond that men (in general ... obviously not every single man) have tried to limit and subjugate women based on expected gender norms and women knowing their "place" in society and in the family. Indeed, there has been a paradigm shift that has occurred over the last century or two. Things are still not equal and monolithic for men and women but things are a lot closer to that than they have ever been. There has been perhaps some things hindering and otherwise making things problematic. Indeed, the author of this response has noted that many women actually desire to fulfill traditional gender norms while many men have broken out of that and become things like stay-at-home dads and such. More vexing is that both groups are pilloried and criticized for this. The author of this response holds that traditional gender norms should not be enforced but also should not be impugned for voluntarily choosing to align with that (consciously or not) just as men and women alike should not be condemned for being stay-at-home dads or career women, respectively.

Part II -- Question B

Much has been made of the struggles of…

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