Woman and Nationalism

This week’s reading and class discussion surrounds the idea of the creation of nationalism through democratization and the growth of women in the western culture. Nationalism was the liberal view and then became a part of everyone. Not only was there pride for ones country but they would fight to protect their nation. Nationalism created tension between states because every person wanted to protect their nation. That is how strong nationalism got, and some still have the same feelings today. Some people that did not agree with the way there state was running immigration. Nationalism created immigration, which created even more tension between states.
The readings this week also incorporated the rise to power women have gone through to get to where we are today. The low birth rate according to Hobsbawm is several factors; people are having children older, women need to work, and/or the use of contraceptives during those times.
Nationalism became mainstream, because there is more at stake to fight for when being the country you live in. One reason why nationalism was important to mainstream is for war. When war is declared a large band acceptance is needed for the success of the world. The war needs acceptance which leads to the idea that the mainstream media will pick it up. If a war has wide spread acceptance than that will directly correlates with the media attention it gets. If there is wide acceptance than the chance of good media to come out is higher than if there was low acceptance to a war. Iraq war for example, we went in there with little support from not only we the people but other counties. The Iraq war did not have good media coverage. Therefore, the greater the acceptance of a conflict or war the better media stance you get.
I do agree with Hobsbawm on the issue of low birth rate in developed or developing nations. As more developed a country gets the more technology and education a country has. More technology means a higher demand for workers, so women are able to start to work. Education of money and children hinders the want to have children. Women want more than just to stay home and be inferior to men. Education also leads to better medical care in the developed countries which gives us contraceptives. You no longer have to get pregnant at such a young age, but you can work, educate yourself, and with the ability of contraceptive to determine the best time to have children.