Gender Inequality In The 1950's

America gained its independence in 1776 with the expectation that every American should have liberty and equality. However, American women did not have the right to vote until 1920, which was almost more than 140 years after the United States was established. Women could do little to protect themselves and promote their careers due to being treated unequally and inferior to men. During the 19th and the early 20th century, women were working hard and fighting for gender equality, so that more and more women could live a better life with basic civil rights in their hometowns. In reality, women’s equality was challenged by traditional conventions in the fields of biological difference in sexes, religion and gender roles, and different perspectives towards these conventions of different people made women’s civil rights controversial.

As World War 2 progresses, we will see millions of males being drafted after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This created a lack of manpower in the workforce which women beginning to take the jobs that men usually before the war. As women move into the workforce during World War 2 they will experience inequality and discrimination. Despite the inequality and discrimination that women had to endure to while working during World War 2 was a good experience for women across America. Women entered the workforce open up many opportunities, “It had been long assumed women couldn't do those jobs -- engineering, other professions in the sciences, manufacturing jobs that had been considered men's work, things women were believed to be too weak to do” (kcts9.org).

Several social changes in the post-war years opened women to feminism's message. P. 2, The demand for a larger and more skilled labor pool generated by the Cold War, and postwar consumer economy were the driving force cause American society to become more open to feminism’s message. No doubt WW II created the demand for expanded women’s roles in the workplace, Document 1. Having proved their equal abilities during the war, they stood ready willing and able to contribute moving forward. Nevertheless attitudes toward women staying in the workforce after World War II were not favorable.

Phyllis Schlafly, a strong, very verbal anti-feminist, once said, “Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.” Pop culture likes to paint the sixties and seventies as a time where all women were devout, bra burning feminist. However, there are two sides to every story. Just as there were women who were extremely passionate about achieving equal rights and advancements for women, there were also women who were perfectly content with being strictly wives and felt that the women’s liberation movement attacked their life styles. Women who were not apart of the women’s liberation movement felt that women already had a good deal by being housewives and could not quite understand what more

This opened so many possibilities for women because now their voice can be heard. While women have always worked either as a housewife or in the field, it was not until World War II that many women started to begin careers. After the war though there was a big emphasis on religion and family in the 1950’s and 1960’s. This push for Americans to be religious and have a more traditional family

Women were able to join the workforce since there was an increased need for workers while most men were out fighting in war. In a photograph in Washington in 1919 we can see women lined up with working attire as they work on the construction of a ship. (Doc. 3A) This is significant because we see that they are able to contribute and work, demonstrating a shift in what their roles were considered to be. The idea that women were meant to be nothing more than housewives were discarded after the increased need for workers.

In the 1960’s citizens of the United States were considered to be living in poverty. It was a difficult and controversial time for American citizens due to the lack of food, jobs, and education. Apart from these factors there was both economic and racial inequality occurring at the same time. Throughout the presidency of John F. Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson there was a plan to end poverty not through the aid of welfare, but through opportunities. Opportunities to succeed, advance, and reach prosperity, but even though this was the aim some of the problems discussed in the 1960’s are still being questioned today.

During World War II, women were not being underestimated as much in the work industry. The war allowed women to be able to do a “man’s job” and do it well or even better. This idea is important because women were seen as weak and incapable simply because of their gender, so during the war it opened up many opportunities for all women no matter the color of their skin or if they were married or not. World War II had allowed women to work more and be granted to be able to do jobs like government work, office work, and even do steelwork. World War II helped women prove their worth, capabilities, strengths, and intelligence.

At the end of World War I and World War II, after women had taken over male jobs while fighting, men returned but women wanted to keep the jobs they had obtained when the war had ended (Stoneham). Women of the wars had gained lots of independence, but when the 1950s came around women lost it and became more domestic. The women of the 1950s returned back to the idea of being required to work at home and that they had no place in society. But 1950s women were more than just a passive link between working women of the war and political activists in the 1960s, the 1950s gave women the drive and motivation to be as strong in society that they are today. (Holt).

Feminism: the advocacy of women 's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. “The 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, granting women the right to vote. It seemed to many, at the time, that the women 's rights movement was over. Having obtained the right to vote, women now had equal rights. Except that was far from the case.

This picture, poster, and song inspired many women then and inspire many women still. Women going into the workforce in the 1940s caused changes that are linked to time, are positive and negative, and were caused by people. Both change may be positive or negative and change may be caused by people or may be natural all depend on perceptions of the matter. Whether men and women are equal or not is all based on opinions. Some women think that they are equal, while others think that women still aren’t equal to men.

In this paper I will be going over issue 17, “Has the Women’s Movement of the 1970’s Failed to Liberate American Women?”. Sara M. Evans and F. Carolyn Graglia each voice their opinions about the issue. They talk about the history of the women’s movement throughout time and the effects it had in our country. F. Carolyn Graglia writes about how she agrees the movement has failed to liberate American women. Her views on feminism concluded that the feminist movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s was a reasonable but a faulty idea, in that it was based on a worthy opinion (that all men and women should be equal).

When the men went off to fight in World War II, women took over their jobs to aid the war effort by joining organisations which allowed the men to be recruited into the war as soldiers. For the

Raisin in the Sun: Gender Roles Defied Following the event of World War Two, America during the 1950s was an era of economic prosperity. Male soldiers had just returned home from war to see America “at the summit of the world”(Churchill). Many Americans were confident that the future held nothing other than peace and prosperity, so they decided to start families. However, the 1950s was also a time of radical changes. Because most of the men in the family had departed to fight in the war, women were left at home to do the housework.

During the 1890’s until today, the roles of women and their rights have severely changed. They have been inferior, submissive, and trapped by their marriage. Women have slowly evolved into individuals that have rights and can represent “feminine individuality”. The fact that they be intended to be house-caring women has changed.