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Social effects of World War II
Social effects of World War II
WW 2 effects on American society
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World War II was a time of great change the entire world, specifically the United States of America. While young boys and men left the United States to fight the war, women were left to keep life going. This caused great change in women’s attitudes toward themselves and their place in American society. Even though all women went through this change during World War II, Mexican American women specifically went through a change that not only challenged the status quo in white America, but also changed how their own communities and families saw them. While the author argues that these changes are a result from World War II, the author fails to bring enough evidence of this.
Before World War II, the author argues that Mexican American young women
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It seemed like the author made many jumps from the evidence that they supplied and the conclusion. Throughout this essay, the author mainly focuses on how the authorities view the Pachucas, like how authorities thought they were involved with gangs, that they dangerous and violent, that they committed many crimes. And how the authorities reacted to this, how they sent these young women to juvenile detention centers and blamed the families for the girls being this way. The author does not focus on how the Pachucas effect their community. While the author briefly touches on how the families felt about the Pachucas and how the parents would react when their daughters would first start acting and dressing in this way, the author does not address how the Mexican American community went from the feelings of shame, dishonor and disapproval of the Pachuca fashion, attitudes, and actions to just accepting this part of the new Mexican American women. It seems that the author made too many leaps without actually showing the thought process behind it or providing enough evidence of this in the
Genaro Padilla, author of the article Yo Sola Aprendi: Mexican Women’s Personal Narratives from Nineteenth-Century California, expands upon a discussion first chronicled by the historian, H. H. Bancroft and his assistants, who collected oral histories from Spanish Mexican women in the 1870’s American West. Bancroft’s collection, however, did not come from this time period, but closer to the 1840s, a time where Mexican heritage still played a strong presence throughout most of California. These accounts, collected from many different women, in many various positions and lifestyles, shows just how muted the Mexican female voice could be during this era.
This book was published in 1981 with an immense elaboration of media hype. This is a story of a young Mexican American who felt disgusted of being pointed out as a minority and was unhappy with affirmative action programs although he had gained advantages from them. He acknowledged the gap that was created between him and his parents as the penalty immigrants ought to pay to develop and grow into American culture. And he confessed that he got bewildered to see other Hispanic teachers and students determined to preserve their ethnicity and traditions by asking for such issues to be dealt with as departments of Chicano studies and minority literature classes. A lot of critics criticized him as a defector of his heritage, but there are a few who believed him to be a sober vote in opposition to the political intemperance of the 1960s and 1970s.
Oftentimes, societal problems span across space and time. This is certainly evident in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents a novel in which women are treated peripherally in two starkly different societies. Contextually, both the Dominican Republic and the United States are very dissimilar countries in terms of culture, economic development, and governmental structure. These factors contribute to the manner in which each society treats women. The García girls’ movement between countries helps display these societal distinctions. Ultimately, women are marginalized in both Dominican and American societies. In the Dominican Republic, women are treated as inferior and have limited freedoms whereas in the United States, immigrant
The film titled, “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter”, looks at the roles of women during and after World War II within the U.S. The film interviews five women who had experienced the World War II effects in the U.S, two who were Caucasian and three who were African American. These five women, who were among the millions of women recruited into skilled male-oriented jobs during World War II, shared insight into how women were treated, viewed and mainly controlled. Along with the interviews are clips from U.S. government propaganda films, news reports from the media, March of Time films, and newspaper stories, all depicting how women are to take "the men’s" places to keep up with industrial production, while reassured that their duties were fulfilling the patriotic and feminine role. After the war the government and media had changed their message as women were to resume the role of the housewife, maid and mother to stay out of the way of returning soldiers. Thus the patriotic and feminine role was nothing but a mystified tactic the government used to maintain the American economic structure during the world war period. It is the contention of this paper to explore how several groups of women were treated as mindless individuals that could be controlled and disposed of through the government arranging social institutions, media manipulation and propaganda, and assumptions behind women’s tendencies which forced “Rosie the Riveter” to become a male dominated concept.
The story “Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of Mexicans in a Chicago neighborhood. She depicts the life that women endure as Latino wives through her portrayal of the protagonist, Cleofilas. For Cisneros being a Mexican-American has given her a chance to see life from two different cultures. In addition, Cisneros has written the story from a woman’s perspective, illustrating the types of conflicts many women face as Latino wives. This unique paradigm allows the reader to examine the events and characters using a feminist critical perspective.
Nevertheless, Cisneros’s experience with two cultures has given her a chance to see how Latino women are treated and perceived. Therefore, she uses her writing to give women a voice and to speak out against the unfairness. As a result, Cisneros’ story “Woman Hollering Creek” demonstrates a distinction between the life women dream of and the life they often have in reality.
...ght them that they were given the same opportunities as whites in the military. The women wanted to also be recognized for their hard work in the military and for traditional male labor jobs. If it weren’t for the women, many bombs, ammunition even tanks wouldn’t have been made or even ran out. Thus the bracero program brought many Mexicans to the United States for work and was paid a low wage. Many struggled with the low wage and horrible living conditions; when their contract was up, many were forced to go back to Mexico. After the war, Many Mexican Americans were discriminated and weren’t respected for the service they put themselves through in order to protect our freedom. Many people have forgotten what the men, women, and programs within WWII did for the United States, and now they are fully remembered on how many of them fought for the future we live in today.
The contrast between the Mexican world versus the Anglo world has led Anzaldua to a new form of self and consciousness in which she calls the “New Mestiza” (one that recognizes and understands her duality of race). Anzaldua lives in a constant place of duality where she is on the opposite end of a border that is home to those that are considered “the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel and the mulato” (25). It is the inevitable and grueling clash of two very distinct cultures that produces the fear of the “unknown”; ultimately resulting in alienation and social hierarchy. Anzaldua, as an undocumented woman, is at the bottom of the hierarchy. Not only is she a woman that is openly queer, she is also carrying the burden of being “undocumented”. Women of the borderlands are forced to carry two degrading labels: their gender that makes them seem nothing more than a body and their “legal” status in this world. Many of these women only have two options due to their lack of English speaking abilities: either leave their homeland – or submit themselves to the constant objectification and oppression. According to Anzaldua, Mestizo culture was created by men because many of its traditions encourage women to become “subservient to males” (39). Although Coatlicue is a powerful Aztec figure, in a male-dominated society, she was still seen
What if your family’s life was in your hands and a decision had to be made, and quickly? What if war was consuming the things that were revolving you? Well that was the case for the majority of the Mexican families living during the Mexican revolution. Many Mexicans fled Mexico moving to America looking for a prosperity, wealth, a better life to live because revolution had taken charge in Mexico, destroying people houses, changing family’s lives.
...iscuous, violent, and irrational category of race and gender. Traditional Mexican families highly valued their daughters’ virgin statuses over racial “purity”, while Anglos followed the typical model of reproductive segregation—but with the façade of integration that was inadvertently cultural assimilation, or, bigotry.
Cofer, Judith Ortiz. "The Myth of the Latina Woman." Bullock, Richard, Maureen Daly Goggin and Francine Weinburg. The Norton Field Guide to Writing. Ed. Marilyn Moller. 3rd. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013. 806-812. Print.
¬¬The women in Mexico and the United States were both faced with enormous obstacles to overcome. In spite of the difficulties they faced, women from both countries sought to better themselves in the midst of the chaos. They strove to gain control of their lives and demanded a voice within their country.
World War II was the catalyst that changed the opportunities available to women and eventually the way they were regarded as a viable workforce. Suddenly women throughout the United States were pushing themselves to their limits to support the war effort. Women were fulfilling jobs and responsibilities that many previously believed to be impossible for their gender. Opportunities were opened in steel plants, ammunition factories, and even the United States military. As the war progressed the number of male workers declined dramatically. Society had no choice but to turn to the mothers, sisters, and daughters of our nation for help. The results for each woman varied but the nation was to be forever changed in how it looked at women in the work force. Although employment opportunities after the war were significantly reduced for women due to the return of the male soldiers, the effort and abilities women displayed during these difficult times had far reaching effects. Women's actions in small communities like the Hunter Chemical Plant in Huntsville, Alabama and Bridge and Steel Industrial Plant in Mt Vernon, Ohio changed the way men viewed their physical abilities. The creation of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) resulted in changing the way the government viewed women as a viable asset and led the way for the women who serve proudly in today's military. In this paper I will address the change in the attitudes of society and the way small communities and the government itself viewed the physical capabilities of women.
Indigenous people of the world have historically been and continue to be pushed to the margins of society. Similarly, women have experienced political, social, and economical marginalization. For the past 500 years or so, the indigenous peoples of México have been subjected to violence and the exploitation since the arrival of the Spanish. The xenophobic tendencies of Spanish colonizers did not disappear after México’s independence; rather it maintained the racial assimilation and exclusion policies left behind by the colonists, including gender roles (Moore 166) . México is historically and continues to be a patriarchal society. So when the Zapatista movement of 1994, more formally known as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación National (Zapatista Army of National Liberation; EZLN) constructed a space for indigenous women to reclaim their rights, it was a significant step towards justice. The Mexican government, in haste for globalization and profits, ignored its indigenous peoples’ sufferings. Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico, consisting of mostly indigenous peoples living in the mountains and country, grew frustration with the Mexican government. It was in that moment that the Zapatista movement arose from the countryside to awaken a nation to the plight of indigenous Mexicans. Being indigenous puts a person at a disadvantage in Mexican society; when adding gender, an indigenous woman is set back two steps. It was through the Zapatista movement that a catalyst was created for indigenous women to reclaim rights and autonomy through the praxis of indigeneity and the popular struggle.
The ethnic- Mexican experience has changed over the years as American has progressed through certain period of times, e.g., the modernity and transformation of the southwest in the late 19th and early 20th century, the labor demands and shifting of U.S. immigration policy in the 20th century, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Through these events Mexican Americans have established and shaped their culture, in order, to negotiate these precarious social and historical circumstances. Throughout the ethnic Mexicans cultural history in the United States, conflict and contradiction has played a key role in shaping their modalities of life. Beginning in the late 20th century and early 21st century ethnic Mexicans have come under distress from the force of globalization. Globalization has followed the trends of conflict and contradiction forcing ethnic Mexicans to adjust their culture and combat this force. While Mexican Americans are in the struggle against globalization and the impact it has had on their lives, e.g., unemployment more common, wages below the poverty line, globalization has had a larger impact on their motherland having devastating affects unlike anything in history.