- The Changing Role of Women
- 1950’s woman: wife, mother, homemaker
- Betty Friedan in “The Feminine Mystique” asks: is this all there really is to life? Is this all women are capable of?
- NOW develops: National Organization for Women. Largest feminist movement since suffrage.
- Linked with Civil Rights Movement
- 1950’s woman: wife, mother, homemaker
- Women in the 60’s 70’s
- “Freedom Trash Cans”- women demonstrated outside a Miss America pageant, and threw away objects typically associated with women
- Fake eyelashes, hair curlers, high heels, bras….
- Fake eyelashes, hair curlers, high heels, bras….
- “Sexism” enters America’s vocabulary
- “Ms” becomes popular, instead of “miss” (denoting single) and “mrs” (married)
- Politics: only 19 women in Congress; women earned 59 cents to every dollar men earned
- “Freedom Trash Cans”- women demonstrated outside a Miss America pageant, and threw away objects typically associated with women
- Effects of the Changed Mindset
- By 1980, more female undergraduates than male
- As women rejected the housewife role and chose careers, marriage and kids were pushed back
- Birthrates plummeted.
- Divorces skyrocketed, as women acted on their happiness
- By 1980, more female undergraduates than male
- Fight for Reproductive Rights
- Birth control: gave women power over when to have kids
- (Think:typically, women are left to the child raising responsibilities)
- Led by the Catholic Church many states made birth control illegal
- Supreme Court case Griswold v Connecticut ruled that such laws were unconstitutional
- Result? You guessed it, premarital sex skyrocketed.
- Cohabitation: couples living together before getting marriage
- Roe v Wade: legal battle over abortion
- Birth control: gave women power over when to have kids