Gender roles in society and culture

Gender Roles

The effects of the Second World War on gender relationships were observed, brought into public attention, discussed and analyzed in newspaper articles and magazines of the time. The heavy propaganda destined to sustain the moral of the German troops and encourage the members of their families to contribute to the war efforts was starting to be directed to the changes brought to the established patriarchal family system that placed each gender in its boundaries. A temporary change in gender roles was already known from the First World War, but the end of the First World War was separated from the beginning of the Second World War by a bridge of twenty one years. By the end of the First World Wart, most of the women had to return to their roles as caretakers of their family and household while their male counterparts returned at their original roles as providers. The German Home Front in World War II presents the concerns of the women who were staying at home while their husbands were fighting on the frontline. More than three years after the war broke out, families were starting to experience several effects converging of different causes: prolonged separation between the former head of the family and his wife and children, his alienation due to his traumatic experiences in the combat, his wife's difficulty in understanding and processing her husband's emotional and sometimes, physical scars. The couples staid in contact through letters, visits home and front leaves, but it still did not account for a desirable replacement of gender relationships during normal times of peace.

The switch in roles, although temporary, stretched over a period of years that contributed to the change in mentalities. The women became bread winners and although they were still dedicated to the war cause, they could not help developing new habits that did not involve their husbands as much as before the war. Aware that their partners and fathers of their children were risking their lives on the front lines, they were fighting to keep their families afloat.

The material in the German Home Front in World War II presents the concerns of those who were analyzing the phenomena of estranged families as a result of the war effects. The authors of the article presented are carefully dividing the guilt between male and female partners. The mental burden is weighing on both man and woman, as the man is bearing the mental wounds of the front line, whereas the woman is believed to be craving for a family to take care for that included a long-term husband and not a temporary one. This explanation is certainly debatable under the circumstances of today's sociology, psychology and historic perspective. A family life is one of interrelation. A temporary break up between the partners that extends over longer periods of time and is highly unpredictable as to how long is going to take is most certainly destined to cause significant changes in the family life. Moreover, women and children that are evacuated due to various reasons are even more stressed as they are forced to live with strangers, in cramped quarters, lacking thus the minimum amount of comfortable living space. The stains of the war were taking their tall on both genders.

Solomon Perel's autobiographical Europe presents the story of gender relationships during the Second World War from the point-of-view of a young Jew who found the solution to escape the concentration camps by denying his Jewish origins. The young Solly hides true identity and poses as an ethnic German and ends up as a Hitle's Junge in love with a fervent Nazi who is a fanatic Jew hater. The war affects him exactly around the age a teenager starts to form his own identity and assume responsibilities according to the education he received from his family and from school. The war changed every bit of normality in the life of teenagers and adults alike. Some of the future adults had to change their identity, thus denying themselves up to that point, like Solly. The psychological burden of such an undertaking will not fail to appear. The vicinity of the Holocaust was yet another element that gave the changes in gender relationships another twist.

In the closing chapter to his book the Second World War: A Short History, Robert Alexander Clark Parker emphasized the enormous changing effects the Second World War had at all levels of society in the European countries. Entire cities and villages destroyed, family lives altered for ever, mass murder and atrocities revealed as the war approached an end, all these elements converged toward changed mentalities. Thse affected the gender relationships for good. Even if the process of women's emancipation was still slow and had many obstacles to overcome yet, it rolled like an avalanched that swept the entire Europe and the United States. The old male dominated societies were in no position to oversee women's merits during the war, as they did between the world wars. Women themselves discovered that they were able to provide for their family and for themselves, thus becoming free from the old beliefs that assigned them the limited role of wife, mother and caretaker of the household. The spiritual freedom western women gained during the Second World War placed the struggle for equal rights on the point of no return. The post war period still needed women in the active working force in Europe because the villages and cities that had been completely or partially destroyed by the heavy bombardments needed to be rebuilt. The high numbers of widows or women whose husbands had been gravely injured during the war needed to stay in the working force because they became the sole providers for their families. Even if they were willing to remarry, the men were outnumbered by women, making the process of finding a husband more difficult. From their own conviction or because they were forced to, women proved that they were capable to support a family and realizing that they were no longer dependent on their partners gave them more authority and courage to undertake tasks they believed were impossible before.