Idea of progress : to what extent this has changed the rights,' lives and images of women. ?

Today I am going to talk about the Ideas of Progress. I would like to begin by explaining that there are many types of progress: technological, economical and social evolution. I am going to speak today about social advancement and to what extent this has changed the rights,' lives and images of women.

Firstly, I will talk about what American women did during WWII. In this part of the notion Ideas of Progress we saw in class two propaganda posters, with different slogans: The first one is "The more Women at work, the sooner we win", at the bottom of this poster, there is a list of the different types of work available for women to do while the men were at war. The second one says "Do the jobs he left behind" on this poster we can see a woman using a drill advertising the US Employment Service. In addition we know that only women aged between 20 and 30 were called up to work. During 1943(nineteen forty three), 90% of single women worked in factories, on the land or in the armed forces. While only 80% of married women were employed in this branch of the industry. Weapon factories were the priority during the war. The number of women involved in the Armed forces during the war effort was approximatly 640.000(six hundred fourty thousand).Around 55.000 (fifty five thousand) women served with guns and provided essential air defence. Others drove ambulances, nursed, and many helped with the resistance.

Now I will talk about women during the Victorian era. At this time women were men's property. They were beaten and were kept at home to do all the domestic work, such as cooking, cleaning and raising children. To illustrated this, in class we discussed a painting called The Outcast by Richard Redgrave which was painted in 1851 ( eighteen fifty one). The painting shows a father by an open door pointing to his daughter who is holding a baby indicating that she should leave because she has an illegitimate baby and it's a scandal for the family. The father is a strong man and shows his strength and his authority towards his daughter a weak and submissive woman. In the background we can see the rest of the family who are crying.

Thirdly I will talk about the speech of Emma Watson at the UN and an article written by the Harvard Independant. Emma Watson's Speech introduced her campaign He for She in 2014 (twenty fourteen). As the UNs womens ambassador and as a modern woman she was involved in the campaign for gender equality and to stop "man-hating". Now I'm going to talk about the article in the Harvard Independant which states that 58% of women at college receive better grades than men. Women perform better in school but they don't have the top jobs with a good salary and higher responsibilities.Why? I think some women may want to have children... or is it because of tradition? However this mentality is changing too. Gradually we are seeing a role reversal where women are earning more than men and men are staying at home doing the domestic jobs and looking after the children.

To conclude we can say that women's rights have improved dramatically since the end of the first world war. There is still a large gap in equal pay and promotion opportunities but these Ideas of Progress will continue into the future.

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