Transcript for: the positive impacts war has had on women's rights.
Interviewee: Khadija Agil
Subject: Moving Minds - Imperial War Museum North
When it’s the two minutes silence, I think about the suffering that all the soldiers and all the people back home must have gone through. I think about how our society would be today, had those soldiers and those people not contributed to the war effort. I think especially in terms of feminism; in terms of us being allowed to go out into the workplace and being allowed to vote, and being allowed to do all the things that we are allowed to do today and to have an education. I just think that it’s an incredible achievement, and that we just owe so much to all of those soldiers, and to all the people back home as well who worked in the factories and who worked to supply food and weapons and all the things to the soldiers.Prior to the world wars, women were just expected to sit at home and cook and clean, and look after the children. Most of them weren’t educated- fine, they could play the piano and they’d take some art lessons- but they didn’t have the choice to go and study the sciences, it was mostly the arts. They didn’t have the right to vote; everything the owned they didn’t own it, their husband owned it. Post the world wars, I think it gave people the chance to chose to own property and to go to school and to get an education, to get jobs. It gave women the choice, asked them whether or not. Ok, if you want to stay home and have children, that’s you choice, so it wasn’t imposed by anyone. Or, you could go out and have an education, and get a career. Or you could do both. It gave women the choice, rather than having to stay at home and raise children.