Gender Relations after the Second War

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Dear Student,
Since you did not state whether or not the 2 topics on your posting are essays or published work bearing said titles or just topics of discussion themselves, I am going to base this solution on the 2 essay work on the same titles. There are several essays and short story work entitled 'The War Between the Sexes' and for the latter, 'The Attacks on the Domestic Bondage of Women' the work of Edith Stern is held as most prominent. I hope this solution will be of help to you. Please remember that you cannot pass this solution as your own - use it only as a base and guide in putting together your own personal version. Good luck with your studies. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me a message.

Sincerely,
OTA 105878/Xenia Jones
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The War Between the Sexes

While a number images from the 2nd World War depicted images of men - grim, brave soldiers from either side, most images of women are either as nurses, mothers waiting for their sons and husbands to come back from the war and women 'workers' filling in the ranks at factories to take on roles usually relegated to men for the purpose of supporting the war and backing up industry and economy. Some of the worse images of women during the war are those of women who by their ethnic and religious affiliation, by social class or physical deformity ended up in SS concentration camps spread across Nazi Germany territory. Feminism as an ideal had been around since the 18th century in the work of Mary Wollstonecraft - 'A Vindication of the Rights of Women'. Up until the start of the 1st and 2nd World Wars events and personalities that pushed for women's rights and equal status of the sexes had been around in America as much as Europe. But when the wars raged, with war and the military seen as a male-dominated endeavour, women took the backstage. They did not however play 'little roles' - the most effective spies that the Allied had where women, helping them break the Enigma code. Without American and British women filling in the ranks necessary to support the factories that propped up the needs of their armies and nations, there would have been no healthy economic system to support the war effort. Still, the idea behind 'The War Between the Sexes' - that there is an eternal struggle for dominance between the male and female gender. Essayist Burton Blumert who wrote an essay on the very title believes that H.L. Mencken (1918) had it correct when he wrote 'In Defense of Women' to declare that -

"There was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate and take advantage of. There was no trick that she did not put to effective use. There was no device so bold and inordinate that it daunted her."

Blumert believes that compared to Stalin, Hitler, homosexuality, moral decadence and other such threats to masculinity, there is one true threat to the economic and social 'well-being' of any average man. I quote -

"What is the single greatest threat to the economic well-being of the average man?" Illness? Corrupt government? Wrong. The correct answer is, Woman.
He proposes that while women might appear to be the weaker of the sexes, it is part of their ...