Women

I especially enjoyed reading chapter 8. I love to read about how women came into power. The traditional roles of women as a mother and housewife were not necessarily bad roles. Where would we all be with out our motherly figure in our lives? It's just at this time this was the only roles women were allowed to have. This is it was bad.

At this time in history Hobsbawn talks about how women's roles in society changed from one end of the spectrum to the other. Women went from almost no rights at all to fighting for the right to vote. Hobsbawn talks a lot about decline of birth rates. Women's changing roles in society had a lot to do with this. Instead of marrying in their teens, women were marrying at a later age. Marrying later in life gave women more time to discover themselves as individuals. Instead of going from under daddy's rule straight to the obedient wife, they were able to express themselves as individuals and find their feminist power. This also helped lead to women not even marrying at all and just staying single. Women were also be able to use a form of birth control now. More women were also going out into the workforce. Instead of staying in and being the homemaker and housewife women were going out making money for the household as well. This wasn't all positive though. Women were exploited in their jobs. Women wanted the right to vote, so they took action, they were no longer quiet. The Feminist movement was on and moving forward.

Being a woman myself makes me happy to learn about these things in history. These women of this era took the good with the bad and pushed through these discriminatory barriers of this time and helped put women where we are now.