The 1920s, also known as the “roaring twenties,” was the era of jazz, mass communication, motion pictures, radios, and magazines. This was a time of change, but nothing astonished people more than the creation of the “new woman.”

            During the twenties more women started working and going to college; disregarding the gender positions and norms. Saturday Evening Post started writing articles about college women who enjoyed drinking, smoked cigarettes, wore more revealing dresses with dangly necklaces, rolled their stockings down to the knee, and enjoyed sex. In 1900, because all state universities, with the exception of three (Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana), accepted women on the same basis as men, there was a fifty percent increase in the amount of eighteen to twenty-one year old undergraduates. When women started going to college, it signified that they were gaining knowledge in worldly occupations, not just domestic.

            Women also got involved with politics. The Nineteenth Amendment was approved in 1920 which granted women the right to vote. Ever since this amendment was passed, women have been entering “uncharted territory.” One Kansas woman stated, “I went to bed last night a slave[;] I awoke this morning a free woman” (The American Promise page 836). Women started urging Congress to pass laws that particularly affected them. These measures involved protecting women in factories and granting federal aid to schools.  Black women tried persuading federal courts to presume jurisdiction over the crime of lynching. Women’s only substantial legislative accomplishment was when the Sheppard-Towner Act was passed in 1921, which elongated federal assistance to states pursuing to reduce appallingly high infant mortality rates. This act noted the beginning of great influence women had in the 1920s.

            Feminists were divided into two groups, those who seek special protection and those who wanted the right of equal protection. The National Women’s Party rivaled for an Equal Rights Amendment that stated plainly, “men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States” (The American Promise page 837). A more cautious League of Women Voters thought that the amendment’s wording jeopardized state laws that accommodated special protection for women, such as excluding women from night work and restraining them from working on particular machines. The Equal Rights Amendment was defeated in 1923 causing radical women to work within a network of private agencies and reform associations to progress the causes of birth control, legal equality for youth, and the end of child labor.

            In 1920 Margaret Sanger restated her capital conviction, “no woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother” (The American Promise page 837). Sanger pursued the conservative American Medical Association, linking birth control with the eugenics movement, which supported limiting replication among “undesirable” groups. This made contraception an admirable topic for discussion.

            It was also becoming common to see women in the workplace. By 1930, one in four women had a job and they obtained 40 percent of salesclerks. They were starting to aggregate towards “women’s jobs,” which were secretaries, stenographers, and typists. Women nearly took over the occupations of librarian, nurse, elementary school teacher, and telephone operator. More women workers meant that fewer females were interested in protective legislation for women. They wanted salaries and opportunities the same as men’s. Working women had increased earnings that meant more buying power.

            The 1920’s was the time when the flapper style emerged. This fad was spread from coast to coast through films, novels, magazines, and advertisements. The flapper wore unbuckled galoshes, had short, bobbed hair, and wore lipstick and rouge. These girls would dance all night to jazz while wearing the latest styles; dresses with short skirts and drop waists, bare arms, and no petticoats. New women challenged American principles, the double standard of sexual conduct, and the Victorian ideas of proper female appearance and behavior.

            Hollywood was a major influence on the new woman. With new films being made, movie stars started paving the way for fashion trends. Women wanted to look like the onscreen actresses and wear the same hairstyles, makeup, and clothes as their favorite icon. Many of the famous icons of the 1920’s included Louise Brooks, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, and Ginger Rogers.

            The new woman rejected the older generation; they smoked and drank in public, rejoiced in the sexual revolution, and accepted consumer culture. These women were pushing against the borders on which society had enforced upon them. Even the media embraced this new change. Magazines started running articles with the title, “To Bob or Not To Bob?”

            The new woman was an extremely controversial and influential female who, I believe, shaped the women today. They worked for what they believed in and dressed the way they wanted, not caring what others thought. These women stood out, it is your choice if you thought it was in a good way or not. If the new woman were not as brave as they were, we might not live in the world we live in today.