Gender Roles: Oppression or a Cover-Up?

Typical Nazi Propaganda: The Ideal Nazi Woman 

     “(A woman's) first and foremost place is in the family, and the most wonderful duty which she can take on is to give her country and her people children, children which carry on the success of the race and assure the immortality of the nation." Joseph Goebbels’, the State Minister for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda, words couldn’t have made the Nazi position on women more clear; that they belonged at home, having and raising children. The Nazis forced strict gender roles on women through propaganda, laws that kept them out of the workplace, and through rewards for marriage and childbirth. The Nazis made sure to keep women out of the political sphere and promoted the “ideal woman”, one whose place was at home, cooking, cleaning, raising good Nazi children, and taking care of her husband. A woman’s place was out of the public eye and tucked away in the private sphere of her own home. Many women accepted their roles and became party of the machinery that allowed the Nazi Party to flourish. However, some women took these oppressive gender roles and stereotypes and turned them right back on the Nazis by using them to cover up their participation in resistance.

The stereotypical view of women as passive housewives that obeyed their husbands’ orders prevented the Nazis from suspecting women of activities of resistance.. Women resistors were fully aware of these highly propagated stereotypes and therefore were able to take advantage of them carrying out their work without attracting attention. Women resistors had varying motivations for participating in resistance, but it would be incorrect to define their motivations as feminist or a response to the oppressive stereotypes placed upon them. “Most women resistors were members of clandestine networks and subcultures led by men and guided by a particular ideology or set of beliefs that the defeat and overthrow of the Nazi regime was more important than any other contemporary political goal, including progress towards the emancipation of women…” (Matthew Stibbe, p. 129) Although women’s resistance was not a direct response to the Nazis oppressive policies towards women, women used the Nazi’s dismissal of women’s abilities and courage to successfully participate in resistance.