Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

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allies, not given a real choice without much bigger issues coming into play, like the loss of strength between Australia’s alliance with the US and UK.

The Vietnam war produced many positive social impacts on Australia. One of the main positive impacts, similar to World War Two, is that it gave women a much more prominent role in Australian life, as they would have to do the jobs of the men. To begin with, the Vietnam war gave woman a platform to start their own liberation movement, right in amongst the start of second wave feminism, where women were beginning to fight for equal rights throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. Just like in World War Two, many women had to take over the jobs that the men who were sent away to war were previously doing prior to the war, so their roles in Australian society dramatically changed, and alongside the pressure put on the government by the second wave feminists, this gave women a much more equal playing field against men in the work force, and in general day to day life. On top of this, it gave women a much more prominent role in the war, and moving into future wars. Throughout the Vietnam War, women were involved in many aspects of the war, however they were mainly involved in nursing. As well as this, many of the nurses in Vietnam took time to volunteer and assist Vietnamese locals, by teaching them English and helping mend their wounds. All of this added up ended up giving women a much more prominent role in the war compared to what they had beforehand in Australian society due to the Vietnam War. Furthermore, the Vietnam War and the aftermath of it made Australia become much more multicultural due to immigrants coming into the country after the war. Approximately 90,000 Indo-Chinese (Skwirk, 2018) refugees came into the country in the decade after the war, and for many of these people, it was very clear that Australia was making a focused move towards multiculturalism and ridding the country of the ‘White Australia’ policy that started from