Modern American women, 1920 to the present

Abstract

Abstract ‘Modern American women, 1920 to the present’ begins with Eleanor Roosevelt, perhaps the twentieth century's most influential and admired American woman. It describes new dilemmas for modern women, who got many of their ideas from the movies, and how gender—as well as class, race, and geography—affected the experience of hard times during the Great Depression. The New Deal's mix of relief programs, stimulus spending, and economic reforms responded to the economic crisis, but it was spending for World War II that solved the problem. The war increased labor opportunities for women. The effects of the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the revival of feminism, and the continuing struggle for equality and diversity are also discussed.