Ratio of Men to Women in 1920

In January of 1920, the making, moving, the access, and the sale of alcohol was banned in the United States of America. This was because of the Eighteenth Amendment. This amendment was one of the most successful out of all of the attempts to remove alcohol. In America, people were not able to buy or drink alcohol legally. Although this was a huge problem in the 1920’s, there were other problems other people had to face. Mostly women. In the earlier times, women were not as free and independent as they are today. Despite the fact that some of them wanted to be more independent and have jobs and bring in money, the men would not let them. Women in the US have organized political movements to obtain the same social, economic, and political rights that men have. It all started in 1848, the women organized an event. It was called the Seneca Falls Convention. It was the first official action of the women’s rights movement. As quoted in Women’s Rights Movement, 'the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity' took place in… 1848…”(Cullen-DuPont). Women had few rights at the time.

They were getting denied at colleges, jobs, and even getting denied to do trades. The only jobs they were actually getting accepted at were working at factories, teaching at schools, sewing, or domestic service. Their wages were little to none. If they were married, their husband got their wages. On July 19, 1848, they stood before 300 curious people and presented a Declaration of Rights and Sentiments. That document, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, declared that all men and women are created equal. It demanded equal access to all means of employment and the ministry. And it insisted that women suffered. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone quickly became the movement's undisputed leaders. They and their followers petitioned the nation's state legislatures for women's suffrage and for the reform of property and child custody laws. In Women’s Rights Movements, Kathryn Cullen-DuPont discusses that two years after the representation of the People Act 1918, the Times published grave warnings against moves to extend voting rights to women under 30. Mature females might now engage with politics, but the “scantily clad, jazzing flapper to whom a dance, a new hat or a man with a car is of more importance than the fate of nations” must never be entrusted with a vote.

The flapper of the 20s was partially a cultural stereotype, but she was also a focus of serious debate. With her short skirts and cigarettes, her cocktails, sexiness and sass, she was not only offensive to the men at the Times, but also a concern to older feminists, who saw in her pleasure-seeking, taboo-breaking ways a younger generation’s disregard of all for which the suffragettes had fought. But if the politics of feminism seemed less important to the “flapper generation”, this was partly because young women were taking the struggle for freedom into their personal lives. Ideas of duty, sacrifice and the greater good had been debunked by the recent war; for this generation, morality resided in being true to one’s self, not to a cause. Towards the end of the decade, some feminists would argue that women’s great achievement in the 20s was learning to value their individuality.

Personal freedoms remained dependent on public reform and active UK feminists such as the Six Point Group continued to campaign. Women were given electoral equality with men in 1928; legislation brought equality in inheritance rights and unemployment benefits; and women profited from the Sex Discrimination (Removal) Act, which, in 1919, had given them access to professions such as law. Changes in work patterns were dramatic, with a third of unmarried women moving into paid employment across an expanding range of jobs in medicine, education and industry. Mass employment also made women a consumer power. Fashion was one of several industries that expanded rapidly to meet their demands. While the Times considered clothes a frivolity, for women they were a daily marker of liberation: rising hemlines, sportswear and even trousers made their generation physically freer than any in modern history.

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