Analysis: Let Us Have Action for Women Instead of Lip-Service

Date: April 7, 1943

Author: Fannie Hurst

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

As World War II raged on in 1943, writer Fannie Hurst delivered a speech to the National Women's Conference sponsored by the New York Times. In her speech, Hurst observed how role changes caused by the war increased women's economic power and independence. In particular, more women worked outside the home while men were off fighting the war, which gave women more opportunities to participate in the public sphere.

Hurst asked women to consider which roles they wanted to occupy in society once the war was over. She implored women not to give up the ground they have gained and to exert themselves in public roles such as government and finance. She believed that women could play a key role in preventing future wars, but she criticized their lack of action to date as “lip-service.” Finally, she emphasized the importance of empowering women to shape the world in which they would live and raise their children.

Defining Moment

Between 1917 and 1919, many American men joined the military to fight in World War I. In their absence, women filled their jobs in factories, farms, and other industries. This shifting of roles helped maintain the US economy during the war and ensure the manufacture and transport of materials needed for the war. Working outside the home empowered women to participate in public life; but as men returned from war, women were expected to leave their new positions and return to the private, domestic sphere of their homes.

Only twenty years later, the United States became involved in World War II. As men left their jobs to fight in another war, women once again assumed jobs in the industries needed to keep the nation operating on the home and war fronts. Even more so than during World War I, women experienced the independence and power that accompanied their participation in economic and community endeavors.

Women had also made significant gains in the public sphere since World War I. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granted American women the right to vote, and women increasingly participated in all levels of government. For example, by the early 1940s, ten women were serving in the Seventy-Seventh United States Congress (1941–43).

Additionally, women increasingly participated directly in the war effort: Nearly 70,000 women served in the Army Nurse Corps or Navy Nurse Corps, and permitted military service for women expanded within the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines. During World War II, about 350,000 women served in divisions such as the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and the Army WAAC (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps). Women were often limited to certain roles and denied full military benefits, but nonetheless they contributed significantly to the Allied victory.

Author Biography

Fannie Hurst was born in Hamilton, Ohio, on October 18, 1889. She received her AB degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1909 and attended graduate school at Columbia University. Her writing career started off slowly, but she eventually captured the attention of the popular Saturday Evening Post, gaining a significant following. By 1925, she was among the highest paid writers in the United States.

Throughout her life, Hurst supported a variety of social justice causes, particularly for women and gays and lesbians. During the 1940s she actively raised funds to support refugees from Nazi Germany; in the 1950s she supported the newly formed state of Israel.

During her fifty-year career, Hurst wrote seventeen novels, nine volumes of short stories, three plays, and numerous articles, in addition to participating in speaking engagements, films, and a television talk show. She died in New York City on February 23, 1968; upon her passing, she bequeathed one million dollars to Brandeis University and Washington Universities to establish professorships in creative writing.

Document Analysis

In 1943, at the height of the war, writer Fannie Hurst gave a speech at the National Women's Conference sponsored by the New York Times. She observed how women's position in society had changed over the course of the two world wars; specifically, they had shifted from the private sphere of the home, to the public sphere of industry. Now that women had experienced the economic freedom and power that accompanied working outside the home and actively participating in economic activities, they were less inclined to return to their private, domestic roles as they had done after World War I. She implored women to consider their public roles moving forward, and encouraged greater participation in areas such as government and finance to help women obtain true power to shape society.

Fannie Hurst begins her speech by describing the modern conveniences that have changed women's lives significantly in the previous decades, including time-saving appliances such as washing machines, transportation advances such as automobiles, and communication devices such as the telephone. These developments made women's domestic chores easier, thus allowing them more freedom to participate in public activities.

Hurst also notes some of the significant changes in women's status during and after World War I. She observes that women are able to—and often do—inherit large fortunes when their husbands pass away. Women are generally in charge of the household and children, and they have significant buying power. Thus, she says, women occupy a significant role in the economic, social, and industrial fabric of American life.

However, Hurst notes that, while American women have made significant strides in their participation in public life, there is still a long way to go. Women are increasingly economically independent, attend college, and vote; however, they remain conspicuously absent from many activities that form “pillars of society,” such as government, industry, and finance. She defines power as “the power that goes with active and constructive participation in creating the world in which we and our families live,” and says that women are only “feebly represented” in these departments.

Hurst connects this to the present war by noting that women can play a significant role in achieving and maintaining peace. She says that women's temperament makes them “foes of war,” but that “lip-service rather than action” has meant that women historically have not taken an active role in preventing war. She wants to see women organize, to form a “woman-push,” and to use both their brains and brawn to create specific programs that will prevent future wars.

In observing women's relative lack of power and effort, she draws parallels to artistic fields such as writing, music, poetry, and painting, and notes that women are feebly represented there as well. She asks what “circumscribed conditions” inhibited women from more fully participating in these fields, which have always been open to women. She believes women have “remained the creatively languid sex for environmental reasons.”

At the end of her speech, Hurst says that the solution is not merely to allow more jobs for women, to achieve wider economic independence, or to participate more actively in government. Instead, enlarging women's vision, interests, and power in a much broader sense will enhance a woman's value to her community as well as her family, which in turn leads to “a better human being in a better world.”

Glossary

colossus: anything gigantic or very powerful; word comes from the legendary enormous bronze statue of Helios at Rhodes

Currier and Ives: a successful American printmaking company in New York City from 1834 to 1907

languid: lacking in vigor or vitality; lacking in spirit or interest; listless

Madame [de] Pompadour: Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, a member of the French Court in the 1700s and chief mistress to King Louis XV; a powerful advisor and aid to the King

Muscle Shoals: the former rapid waters of the Tennessee River in Alabama which were turned into a lake by the Wilson Dam

portentous: ominously significant or indicative; momentous

uncircumscribed: not enclosed within bounds; unlimited or unconfined

vaunted: praised boastfully or excessively

WAACS: the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps; founded in America during World War II

WAVES: the Women's Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, the distinct force of women enlistees in the US Navy, organized during World War II

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Bellafaire, Judith A. The Army Nurse Corps. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military Hist., 2003. Print.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Women's Army Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military Hist., 2005. Print.

Brody, Seymour. Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America: 150 True Stories of American Jewish Heroism. Hollywood: Lifetime, 1996. Print.

“Partners in Winning the War: American Women in World War II.” Natl. Women's Hist Museum. Natl. Women's Hist. Museum, 2007. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

Strom, Sharon H. Hartman, and Linda P. Wood. “Women and World War II.” What Did You Do in the War, Grandma? Brown University's Scholarly Technology Group, 1997. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

“Women in Congress.” History, Art and Archives. US House of Representatives, 2006. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

“Women in WWII at a Glance.” Natl. WWII Museum. Natl. WWII Museum, 2014. Web. 12 Nov 2014.