What Is The Role Of Women In The 1970s

The chapter, From Rosie to Lucy, by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, is about how the feminine mystique changed drastically from the era of WWII to the era of the baby boom. The shift was attributed to men’s influence on the women through fashion trends, magazines, and TV shows. The main purpose of the chapter is to show that the propaganda through TV and society affected individuals, and more specifically the feminine mystique.

The Feminine Mystique is the title of a book written by Betty Friedan who has also founded The National Organization for Women (NOW) to help US women gain equal rights. She describes the "Feminine Mystique" as the heightened awareness of the expectations of women and how each woman has to fit a certain role as a little girl, an uneducated and unemployed teenager, and finally as a wife and mother who is happy to clean the house and cook things all day. After World War II, a lot of women's organizations began to appear with the goal of bringing the issues of equal rights into the limelight. The Feminine Mystique also seems to come

The Feminine Mystique caused a colossal uproar as soon as it was released. In the book, Friedan shares her belief “that women were tired of being trapped in the home as housewives and that the entire nation would benefit if women could escape that outdated role and assume a more productive place in the national workforce.”

Women rights movement’s dates back to the nineteenth century as the female gender was seeking to have a place in the society where they have their rights and entitlement fairly given to them. It was instigated by the fact that the male population by making them feel as less beings in the society. This is because they were not entitled to having their views brought out. However, in the 1970’s efforts to secure equal rights for women by eradicating gender discrimination put by institution, laws and various behavioural pattern meet serious activism (Barrett. 2014). The reforms enjoyed currently concerning women empowerment is as a result of all the atrocities that they went through at this time. It is, therefore, evident to say that the challenges faced by women in the 1970’s rights movement gave birth to new opportunities such as coming up with severe laws on gender discrimination, pushed for the Title IX law and defining rape as a crime.

Lingering inequalities and other social trends from previous decades brought forth the modern feminist movement in the 1960s. These feminists campaigned for gender equality with causes such as equal pay for equal work, abortion rights, and social parity. In 1963, author Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, which contained reports from a study conducted on female college graduates during the 1950s and early 1960s, which uncovered that most women labelled themselves exclusively as mothers and housewives, and were unsatisfied with the roles forced upon them. Friedan argued fervently that women needed to discover their own identities outside the roles of a wife and mother. Many believe that the arguments made in The Feminine Mystique marked the start of the modern feminist movement (Loveday, 1)

in society were changing at an immense speed and with very little say in society and were stereotyped to stay home, make children, raise them at home and be a good home-maker and wife all in one. In 1942, women were finally allowed to enter the army or navy which was named as The Women's Army Corps. Women were accepted for volunteer Emergency Services such as in hospitals and got paid or were deployed off with other men leaving their families behind. After these organizations were established, congress authorized women to serve in the U.S. Navy., U.S Airforce and Army. Several females also were accepted to work in a factory, labor-intensive jobs and become the attention of society in the

3) What role did mass media play during the 1950s and 1960s in regard to supporting or undermining the “feminine mystique”?

In her essay “The Importance of Work,” from The Feminine Mystique published in 1963, Betty Friedan confronts American women’s search for identity. Throughout the novel, Betty Friedan broke new ground by seeking the idea of women discovering personal fulfillment away from their original roles. She ponders on the idea of the Feminine Mystique as the cause for the majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house, restricting them from discovering who they are as women. Friedan’s novel is well known for creating a different kind of feminism and rousing various women across the nation.

During the late 19th century and early 20th century, many American women began to feel a sense of hope that one day, they would achieve the same freedom as men had. However, women quickly realized that in order to gain the freedom they desire, they would have to change the social expectations of their time. History played a major part in helping change the social expectations, especially during World War 1 and World War 2, when women went to work and took on the jobs previously performed by American men who were fighting overseas. Many factors have contributed to the changes of social expectations concerning women’s roles in society due to the personal efforts of individual woman and groups of women who band together to fight for their independence

The Feminine Mystique is a first person narrative about the struggles of feminism. It highlights the problems of women in the 1950s to the 1960s and challenges gender roles. The book includes several first person interviews and discusses the Second Wave of feminism. It introduces the idea of the sexulization of women being used in consumerism and the lack of sexual education in school during the time. The Feminine Mystique is a useful resource because it is considered the groundbreaking book about feminism and lists issues that women have had to deal with from the 1960s until now. The book could be used to argue the struggles that women have faced and continue to face.

In the book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan brings attention to what she calls the feminine mystique, or “the problem that has no name”. Through the use of anecdotal narratives, her own personal experiences as a journalist, editor, mother, and the interviews of many women from different backgrounds in order to unveil the truth about the women of the 1950’s. The problem which sparked the second wave of feminism in the United States is one that focuses on the inequality between men and women and the undervaluing of women in both the social and private spheres. The women of the time gave up pursuing their passions, such as getting an education or careers in science or business in order to fit the image of the stereotypical stay-at-home mom whose main goal in life is to raise her children while providing a safe and comforting home for her husband. The Feminine Mystique, as she called it, was the idea of widespread unhappiness of women, despite the preconceived notion that women were happiest when they have a family. Throughout her work, she dives into many of the problems associated with the feminine mystique and builds a powerful concept of what would eventually be labeled feminism.

Betty Friedan wrote the book based on a survey she did for her former Smith College classmates on the their fifteenth anniversary reunion. The results of the survey showed that many of her former classmates were unhappy, despite being affluent and married with children. The reason her Smith College alumnus were so unhappy was due to the fact that their lives consisted of taking care of her family and children, but not doing anything that held significance to themselves and the nation. Her book The Feminine Mystique, was a major influence of the 1960s and 70s American Feminist Movement, selling 1.4 million copies.The Feminine Mystique, made in 1963 is a nonfiction book that is based on the lives and unhappiness housewives felt during the early 50s and 60s. The reason this book was so popular and influenced the 1960s and 70s American Feminist Movement was due to the books widespread relatability among housewives who were financially stable with children, the book impelled women to fight for a change in salary, the workplace, and laws; during a time where women did not have the same equal rights as men. Another popular writer during the 1960s and 70s American Feminist Movement is Robin Morgan. Robin Morgan is an

In the 1960’s, women had been placed in stereotypical roles for years. But women were tired of these roles and were done with being complacent. They felt like something was missing in their lives, and they desired something more. The typical American

The change in society’s views on sexuality during the 1960s created a moral shift in which people and cultural values shifted away from many traditional biblical ethics. With inspiration from African American and their movements in civil rights, many young women sought to achieve gender equality with males despite the society’s cookie-cutter view of women as housewives in the 1950s. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique as an outlash against the view of the traditional American housewife. Friedan took inspiration from Holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim’s analysis of the psychological abuse imposed by the Germans on their prisoners and compared the average suburban home to “comfortable concentration camps” (Wolfe). Alan

During the 1980’s I saw during my research that from the 1900’s to about 1985 ladies' share of professional jobs increased from about forty- four to forty- nine percent and their share of "administration" jobs nearly doubled, increasing from twenty to thirty-six percent. This showed me that after a while, nearly twenty years later, business owners and even the society took the role of our women seriously and started to employ them. The working ladies steadily started to not be attacked based on gender, therefore gender discrimination slowly started to ward off as a thing in the past. During the 1980’s ladies learned to deal with anything that was thrown at them. I am sure that this was proven to be fruitful as women took their jobs very seriously.