now for a whole lot of European history women were primarily viewed as mothers either there were pre-mothers who hadn't had children yet or they were mothers proper who had their children or they were post mothers whose only real job was to make their husbands a sandwich but after World War II that reality began to change significantly and that is what this video is all about so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it now in the post-world War II environment new opportunities for women began to emerge both in Western Europe and Eastern Europe and there were several reasons for this and we'll start with the West First with the post-war economic boom came a high demand for late remember that because of the Marshall Plan funds Western European economies were humming right along and what this terrific growth came new jobs that needed to be filled second the economies of Western Europe were slowly shifting away from being primarily dependent on male-dominated Industries like coal mining or shipbuilding and more toward a knowledge economy in which people work primarily with their brain and because of that women had an easier time entering those more white-collar professions and third many younger women started going to college in droves after the war and that prepared them well for work in the knowledge economy and to be clear though they had more opportunities women still faced inequality in the war workplace many women could only find part-time work and if they did find work it was almost inevitable that they would be paid less than men doing the same work even so it wasn't moving the right direction and to be clear many of these gains in the west were the results of the efforts of feminists and what became known as second wave feminists the first wave of feminism occurred in the second half of the 19th century in the early part of the 20th century and its main goal was to get governments to recognize women's right to vote or if you want the proper term for it and I know that you do women's suffer but as valiantly as the first wave feminists fought for this recognition women's right to vote wouldn't come to full fruition until the second one now in the west this was the result of feminist activism many governments had already recognized a woman's right to vote because of their profound contribution in the war effort of World War One remember that as men left for the war by the millions women took their places in factories in all manner of other vital work that made the war effort possible therefore after the war in 1918 several States made women suffrage a reality like Sweden Hungary Austria Poland Germany Britain and Czechoslovakia over in the United States it occurred in 1920 in France dragging their heels established women's suffrage by 1941 but after World War II many women went back to their roles as wives and mothers seemingly content with having gained such a vital right but the second wave feminists in the 60s and 70s understood that there was much work left to do to achieve equality in a male dominated Society so whereas the main push during the first wave was to secure the right to vote the second way focused on societal issues and inequalities women faced including education and marriage laws and professional career now in France it was the work of Simone de bouvois who laid the foundation for feminist ideals in her book The Second Sex in it she argued that the societal standards that govern women's Behavior ought to be abolished and that women should have every opportunity that men had and her work became the philosophical foundation for second wave feminism however in the East more specifically in the Soviet Bloc and the Soviet Union women gained their rights not by means of feminist agitation but more directly through government policy as far back as the Russian Revolution women had been recognized as equal to men and in many ways had a greater equality of opportunity than anywhere in the west however many of the same troubles plagued women in the Soviet countries that befell them in the west now another revolution of women's roles in the 20th century had to do with their rights to marriage and reproduction for example divorce laws begin to shift giving women some agency in the divorce process which prior to this was almost entirely in the hands of the husband additionally women gained more control over the amount of children they had or whether they had children at all on that front probably the most significant change was the introduction of the birth control pill this new technology was largely the effort of the American feminist Margaret Sanger who poured metric butt loads of cash into the development of this pill essentially it was a pill that women could take that regulated their hormones in such a way that they had a much lower chance of getting pregnant and then when they wanted to get pregnant they could just stop taking the pill now the main pushback against what women considered a profound New Freedom over their bodies came from the Roman Catholic Church by their Reckoning it was God who opened and closed the womb and to introduce a pill that took such a power out of the hands of God was to play God oneself now another technology that emerged along these lines was in vitro fertilization this was a means by which an egg could be fertilized outside the womb and then implanted into a woman's uterus and yes that gave couples who could not naturally get pregnant a new option for children but even more it meant that women could get pregnant apart from being handcuffed to to a man who was always demanding a sin and finally we need to talk about the gains women made in politics during the latter part of the 20th century and perhaps the most famous of them was Margaret Thatcher who became Great Britain's first female prime minister in 1979. she was a fierce conservative who made it her goal to reverse the liberal labor party's policies that have been turning Great Britain into a welfare state for decades she slashed government programs and lower taxes for the wealthy and privatized many state-run agents then in 1990 Mary Robinson Rose to power as the first female president of Ireland and she used her power as president to modernize Ireland which is to say that she worked for the legalization of many cultural taboos like divorce and contraception and homosexuality and then the first female prime minister of France came to power in 1991 namely the Socialist edit croissant her role was not quite as celebrate as the first two women I mentioned since her tenure was played with accusations of corruption but hey men had been accused of corruption for centuries so you know equality all right click right here to keep reviewing for unit 9 of AP Europe and click here to grab my AP Euro review pack which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May I'll catch you on the flip-flop