The Effect of Feminism on Chivalry

Two years ago, actress Jennifer Aniston stated, “Women are realizing more and more that they don’t need to have a man to have a child… Times have changed and what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents' days when you can't have children because you have waited too long.” Although this is a probably the freshest and one of the more dramatic feminist actions in the movement to feminism as it is most recently, it may shed light on the absolute extreme that could come of feminism; not to mention where it’s advancement is at present. More importantly I believe, is the significance of the effect that Feminism has had on America. Females being half of the population, the question: How has Feminism impacted the minds and roles of men?

 The greatest revolution on American feminism was during the 1920’s.The progression of feminism since then was no less inordinate as the impact feminism has had on American culture and society. It was at that time that the new generation of women began to seek more independence in their lifestyles. Young women wanted to achieve a college level education and then assume a job. A shift was made from the simpler, more innocent life which many people held at the time in the country. Although these women were not the first to get jobs in United States history—for minority and low-class women had been working a century prior—they were the first middle class women to intend on changing the way society traditionally was. These women became trademarked as the young, flamboyant flappers. They casted a wave in the conservative American culture with shorter skirts and edgy hairstyles, as well as by taking up jobs typically as secretaries. This indeed was a change, however it was not only them who sought variation in what became coined as the nuclear family in the 1950’s. Older women of the twenties who had been raised and derived from the classic American home of working husbands and wives and who tended to the home and children contributed greatly to the first legal action which set women slightly higher up beside the more yielded to man. It was this group of women who began the revolution by avidly seeking and establishing suffrage.