Women Say Do To Education Then Marriage By Leslie Mann Summary

After World War II, the nation was blooming. Everything was growing, people were going to college, and wealth grew. The idea of the perfect American life was developed, this included a husband that worked and a wife that stayed home and took care of the house and children. To look at how women are affected by this perfect life I am analyzing “Governor Adlai Stevenson Tells College Women about Their Place in Life, 1955” and “Good Housekeeping: Every Executive Needs a Perfect Wife, 1956”.

Women’s education in the United States made huge strides during the Progressive Era. However, along with those strides came negative reactions from not only men but women as well. These second generation women started moving away from their expected nurturing professions and instead started going into male dominated professions. Some of these professions were doctors and lawyers, just to name a few. Due to these career changes, women were required to have bachelor’s degrees and training.

In an essay by Judy Brady titled “I Want a Wife”, Brady discusses the typical gender dynamics of her time period (the 1970s) and challenges them. She essentially says that women are treated like they are inferior to men and so she says that she wishes or wants someone to fulfill her duties for her just like she does for her husband. This essay shows the struggle to gain equality in this time period and also represents the thoughts that a woman in this time period might have. Not only is the meaning behind this essay significant, but the way in which Brady presents it is also significant and it amplifies and strengthens the argument. This is proven by textual evidence found in the essay itself.

It brings up the question: what would a woman that only has a future to be a housewife or housekeeper do with an education? By not taking a woman seriously when she wants to attend school shows that it will be highly likely that an education would be of irrelevant use.

In this satirical article, Brady expresses the difference between the roles of women and men in the 1970’s by stating men’s point of view on women and women’s roles in society. Throughout her article, Brady emphasizes the roles of women. For example, women could now “work and...takes care of the children when they are sick”. Comparing the 1880’s to the 1970’s, there has been a big improvement. Many women had jobs outside their home, but still were responsible for most housework and childcare while their husband’s only responsibility in a marriage was to go to work and earn money to support the family. Society’s expectations allowed women to work outside the home to support college education for husbands; however,women had to know how to balance their time between their children and their jobs, making sure that their husbands “cannot miss classes at school.” During the 1970’s, women were still oppressed in many ways and had to follow society's expectations in order to live up to the men’s view of women’s roles in society. Even though society’s expectations of women had improved since The Awakening, most of women’s roles had stayed the same. In the article, Brady specifies how once a husband is “through with school and has a job, [he expects the] wife to quit working and remain at home so that [she] can more fully and completely take

In her next chapter, Kerber examines the newfound need for the educating of women. Women were not allowed freedom or a political opinion, but they could not be completely pushed aside. For years women had been taught that education made them undesirable to men and educated women were scorned. Kerber argues that a new need for

As a woman myself, it is hard to imagine a time when I would not have been allowed to attend college, let alone be writing this paper. As children most of us heard stories from our grandparent’s about what life was like they were young. I can remember laughing at the thought of “walking up hill both ways” to get to school. With the liberties American Women have today, it is easy to take for granted everything the women before us fought so hard for. It is easy to forget the treatment they suffered in their struggle to bring us to today. In this paper we will examine the lives, struggles, and small victories of women that have led us to

“The subject of the Education of Women of the higher classes is one which has undergone singular fluctuations in public opinions” (Cobbe 79). Women have overcome tremendous obstacles throughout their lifetime, why should higher education stand in their way? In Frances Power Cobbe’s essay “The Education of Women,” she describes how poor women, single women, and childless wives, deserve to share a part of the human happiness. Women are in grave need of further improvements in their given condition. Cobbe suggests that a way to progress these improvements manifests in higher education, and that this will help further steps in advance. Cobbe goes on to say that the happiest home, most grateful husband, and the most devoted children came from a woman, Mary Sommerville, who surpassed men in science, and is still studying the wonders of God’s creations. Cobbe has many examples within her paper that shows the progression of women as a good thing, and how women still fulfill their duties despite the fact that they are educated. The acceptance of women will be allowed at the University of New England because women should be able to embrace their abilities and further their education for the benefit of their household, their lives, and their country.

Sandra Lipsitz Bem was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on June 22,1944 (Golden & McHugh, 2015). She was the daughter of Peter, a mail clerk, and Lilian Lipsitz, a secretary. From a young age, Bem was told cautionary tales of life as a housewife from her mother, Lilian. The cautionary tales of housework spurred her desire of a professional career such as her mother’s and planted the seeds of thought in regards to a marriage based on equality (George, 2014). Eager to pursue an education she enrolled in Carnegie Mellon University. Due to familial issues she made a decision to return home in the year 1965, at the encouragement of her peers she decided to take a course on her way out taught by a young professor Daryl Bem (Golden &

The decision to obtain a higher education beyond high school is no longer a question of if, but when. This is the question that author Caroline Bird discusses in her article, “College is a Waste of Time and Money,” written in 1975. This text strives to convince students, parents, and advisors that obtaining a degree might not be in the best interest for those involved. Circling around the idea that college is a requirement and no longer an act of free will. Bird starts the article off strongly by building her credibility through her own personal research and other credible sources as well as appealing to readers through logical reasoning using numerous statistics, but fails to convince readers and discredits her ultimate goal through a disconnect in her use of analogies.

An opportunity to go to college is not a guaranteed venture. It is an opportunity to further one’s education and live a more stable lifestyle. Also, it is a road that may lead to any number of possibilities in careers and life. An example of this is, hypothetically a student makes a choice to take the path to college and becomes an engineer. She starts her first job which likely does not pay well but is a good start. She meets someone she loves and begins a relationship with this person, and they get married. Soon after marriage she receives a job offer from a well-known manufacturer to be the head engineer in the company. She takes the job along with the high paying salary. The only catch is she must move to the plant's location. After many years, she retires with a substantial amount of money and lives in luxury. What would be her opportunities and possibilities if she did not make that choice to go to college? While this one choice does affect all aspects of her life, it does have a significant impact. Along the way, she made many other decisions. She made a choice to study for her tests and not fail out of college. She also made a decision to get up and work hard every day to enable her to move up in the ranks in her career field. These options are opportunities and possibilities, as are many that she makes daily. Unlike the the women from “Arranged Marriages” this hypothetical woman made

In Adrienne Rich's essay, "Claiming an Education", the author speaks about the female experience against the male-dominated academic scene. Despite the fact that this essay was written in 1979, a number of Rich's points seem timeless. Rich encourages young women to insist on a life of meaningful work. As a seventeen-year-old student, I have often heard from my female companions that they anticipate a higher education as an opportunity to hunt down a spouse. The frequency and zeal of this conclusion, seeing education only as means of marriage, strikes me as particularly pitiful and archaic. Adrienne Rich’s thesis in “Claiming an Education” aptly expresses the array of roles women hold in societies, the benefits, and weaknesses of our education system, as well as the struggles that women are exposed to. She successfully develops her thesis statement by the effective use of a variety of methods of development and various literary devices to improve her writing quality and to help readers interpret her message. I agree with Rich’s thesis statement because education entails being responsible for oneself, not just for women, but for all students.

Crystal was a typical woman of her age. “She is one of a demographic—white women who don’t graduate from high school—whose life expectancy has declined dramatically over the past 18 years.” (Potts, 2013). As mentioned by Potts this demographic is what will be examined in this essay. The question put forth to the reader is “Do uneducated poor white women actually die at an accelerated rate as opposed to educated white women?” Uneducated, white women are at a disadvantage because of the sole reason that they are uneducated. A lot of Americans can expect great things as they continue to live and grow unfortunately that is not always the case. “While most Americans can look forward to living longer than ever, that’s not the case for white women who didn’t graduate from high school. Their life expectancy has actually dropped by five years — from 78 years in 1990 to 73 in 2008.” (Reese, 2013). Reese mentions that the life expectancy has dropped by five years. When people, who are uneducated, they tend not to get enough good jobs. A good job is essential for even the tiniest scrap of health insurance. Health insurance is the first and last place to look when it comes to the question of uneducated white women, for it is here the startling truth reveals itself. Most uneducated people cannot afford good health coverage if any at all. When the market is so dependent on health coverage, there is little to do without it. “The more educated among us are better at forgoing pleasurable and

New York Times reporter, Kate Zernike, in her article, "Why Are There So Many Single Americans?," elaborates on the effects of graduating from a university. Zernike's purpose is to persuade her audience that education affects all aspects of life rather than just a career. She creates a didactic tone in order to coerce the idea that by furthering one's education after high school, it will directly increase a woman's chances of marriage and decrease her chances of divorce. Zernike effectively accomplishes her goal by using logos, pathos, and diction in her article.

Educated women become more affective at improving their own well-being and their family’s welfare. They are better equipped to extract the most benefit from available services and existing opportunities, and to generate alternative opportunities, roles and support structures. These empowering effects of women’s education are manifested in a variety of ways, including increased income earning potential, ability to bargain for resources within the household, decision making autonomy, control over their own sexuality, and participation in public life (Jose and Thampy 2006).