The book I read is Code Girls by Liza Mundy. This book is primarily about the women code breakers in World War II, the narratives of these women, and the contributions they made to the war that were constantly overlooked in history. It also highlights the barriers these women broke and how the war itself impacted the roles these women played throughout society. As the book progressed, I learned about the hidden work these figures did towards the Allied victory.  And I do say figures- because even though the book itself is called “Code Girls“, there were so many other untold stories of people facing discrimination because of their gender, race, skin color, and so on and on. The abundance of discrimination faced by these individuals during this time was extremely confounding, which leads me to my first central idea of the book.

Racism, sexism, and other societal biases shaped opportunities and experiences  individuals had. (P15) Honestly this was one of my few notebook pages that analyzed more issues other than sexism. This page analysis racism and how much it was present in the workforce. Personally I think this page I wrote dives into another big issue that  was not well known in this part of history. Hence, supporting my central idea of how sexism, racism, AND other biases can shape opportunities of people working during the time. Actually, the rest of the notebook pages, (P11, P7, and P16) all have some parts in them showing sexism being present. Again, the book shows sexism as the most prevalent issue, and in my notebook pages, I analyzed them by comparing. For example, my notes on P11, I contrasted the expectations for men and for women, and the difference of opportunities they had. I tried to demonstrate the side that was biased towards compared to the side biased against.

The second central idea is that Straight up “traditional” assumptions causes unjustified widespread of false norms.   As seen in many of my notebook pages, sexism towards women was such a normalized norm during that time period. Although I didn’t mention this in my notes directly, the book itself serves as a legacy, a recognition, to the crucial roles these women played in World War II. It’s like kind of defying these gender norms, showing the stories of women during the war rather than stories under-crediting and not recognizing them. I feel like I had a deeper analysis of this on P11 and P16, where I prompted some examples regarding this and how consequential it is to normalize such “norms”, especially regarding gender when a power imbalance is included. Throughout most of the book as well, the events were influenced by gender inequality and I think it is important to recognize this as a central idea, because the author clearly is against the gender norms (kinda BECAUSE of central idea one. I mean, I feel like my central ideas could be connected, I could say that because straight up “traditional” assumptions causes unjustified widespread of false norm, racism, sexism, and other societal biases shaped opportunities and experiences  individuals had. (and it would still make sense)