The End Yet the Start

The End Yet the Start
 

Women have come a long way in United States. They started with very little importance, where there words almost went unheard to becoming and playing a crucial part in this world. Women in the beginning of time were only thought of typical house wife. Their job was to cook, clean and take care of children. Some were slaves and some were not, they were not always treated equally whether it was race or gender. Men were always the house “boss” and when women wanted to express their opinions about anything especially politics, they were looked down at as if who is she to state an opinion.

Women today have become the opposite of what they were in the past. They have gained the right to vote, speak freely, express their opinions and play major roles in political views. Women have worked their way from abuse and a life that was very depressive, to a life that is happy and free of any violence. Women are looked at with respect and have very important roles in and out of the house.

Women are smart enough to continue the battle of equality in their live. The unequal pay that is between men and women in the same field is going to change. Women are going to be able to state that they are as equally smart and talented as men if not more. They are going to be freer and be able to have more of a say in everything that is going around us.

Women in history will defiantly open up the eyes of what women have really accomplished through life. The idea of feminist that people have perceived about all the women is false. When you tell a guy that you are feminist or even what they think of the idea feminist, they will express ideas that are not valid. Sure there are some women out there that are extremely feminist, however, the concept has been ruined from what the true meaning is. Women have become feminist to protect their rights that were taken away from them in the beginning. Till this day, women are going to be fighting for what really feminist means because it is still a concept that is misunderstood so far.They’ve worked so hard in order to give an equal right and freedom future to their children who are the future of this world. From the beginning till today women still fight for the equal rights they deserve. Women have come a long journey and I think they will still continue to gain more and fascinate us still.

Where the Girls Are

Where the Girls Are

Throughout history, music played an important role in everybody life. Specially in America, music has been there through thick and thin during war times. Every body is able to relate to music some way. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, young teenage girls were the most dependent. In the novel Where the Girls Are by Susan Douglas, covers the major times in what was really going on through a perspective of a women. Whether the topic was music, fairy tails, mothers and public media,film and sex and many others, she talked the truth about it. The novel analysis how far women have come and how mass media assembled and projected the image of women.

Douglas wrote this book about women's history but including personal anecdotes that made the reading fun. Her main thesis was that women were stuck between their feminine desires and their feminist side. She based her argument around the history of hate and love relationship of women to the mass media. She clearly also outlines the feminist and sexist image that the media was portraying these women during the 1950s and 1960s. Mass media plays a central role in our socialization and it continuously bombards women with unclear message regarding what women should and should not, what they can be and what they can not. One of Douglas's key points is that one cannot assume that "the media is all powerful, or that the audiences are just helpless masses of inarticulate protoplasm" (page 16). She argued that audiences resist media images and messages all the time by turning off the television, by ignoring the magazine advertising.

Where the Girls Are is an extremely enjoyable book to read. Her way of telling the female mass media experience and using her own lived experiences is what makes the book unique. At the end of the 1950s and 1960s, the book shows how far women have came along in being more dominant than before. 

Decade of Discovery " The Personal Is Political"

Decade of Discovery " The Personal Is Political" 

The 1960s was the time where deep changes were refining the role of women in American society. More females than ever were able to work and get paid money. Many women however were dissatisfied because of the huge gender imbalance in pay and advancement and sexual harassment at the workplace. One of the most extreme and great change that was occuring in the sexual life of women during this time. It was around the end of the 1960s that most wives were using contraception after the federal government in 1960 finally approved the birth control pill. This freed many women from the unwanted pregnancy and gave them choices, and freedom, in their personal life decisions. 
Americans women during this time started accepting some of the basic goals of the 1960s feminists. These basic goals included the equal pay for equal work, an end to domestic violence, the reduction of limits on women in managerial jobs, an end to sexual harassment, and sharing of responsibility for housework and child rearing. In 1966, the National Organization for Women was formed. In 1968, feminists protested at the Miss America contest in Atlantic City, arguing that the pageant was very sexist. This show that in gender issues was present during this time. 

In the Sara Evans text, Born for Liberty, " in the late sixties feminists challenges were in the headlines and oppositions to the war in Vietnam had toppled the president" (page 284). This shows that women started having their voice count more because they were sick of being in war. They were also able to create a peace movement in 1968 that had over thousand people marching and agreeing on the concept of no more war. In conclusion, the 1960s really did make many significant changes for women.  

The Cold War and the "Feminine Mystique"

The Cold War and the "Feminine Mystique" 

Following World War II, the early Cold War era was marked by a polarizing gender ideology. Women who had entered the manufacturing industry at unprecedented numbers during the war effort, left or were pushed out of higher education and the workforce.
During this time, an idea was arises and was called the Feminine Mystique. The feminine mystique was the false notion that a woman’s “role” in society is to be a wife, mother and housewife nothing else. The mystique is an artificial idea of femininity that says having a career can somehow go against women's role. The mystique was the constant bombardment of housewife and nurturing mother images that esteem the virtue of keeping house and raising children as what woman are supposed too, while criticizing the “masculinity” of women who want to do other things. 
However, the "Feminine Mystique" was not an idea, rather it was a book. Even people who have not read the "Feminine Mystique" can often identify it as a book that drew attention to the massive unhappiness of women trying to fit a media-idealized “happy suburban housewife” image. The book examined the role of women’s magazines, Freudian psychology and educational institutions in limiting women’s life options. Betty Friedan drew back the curtain on society’s pursuit of the pervasive mystique.
During this time period, events were being created which was starting to lead to unsettling feel in women. In the Sara Evans text Born for Liberty mentions " Domestic ideology redefined a new reality- female labor force participation to remove the potential threat of female power and autonomy by making women's work legitimate only as a n extensions of traditional family responsibility."  (pg 262) This quote shows that women during this era started going backward instead of gaining more power. Cold war gave the men the power of control back, putting the women back to their house duty cage again. 

Women in the 1940s

Women in the 1940s

The 1940s and especially the first half of the decade  brought a massive change to the role of women in American society. Not only did women enter the production process, but the whole perception on the capabilities of the so-called "weak gender" altered. Despite the fact that the change was short-lived, according to the National Park Service, the road taken by women in the 1940s continued into the future.

Previously women had very little say in society and were stereotyped to stay home, make babies, be a good homemaker and wife. The 1940's were different, life for women was expanding, the men were at war and some one had to step up and take the men's place.

Not only men were going to war either, the war was so big that in 1942 The Women's Army Corps (WAC) and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES) were established. After these organizations were accepted congress authorized women to serve in the U.S. Navy. Going back to state side roles women worked factory, labor intensive jobs and become the attention of society in the entertainment industry.

1943 The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was founded. In 1945 Eleanor Roosevelt became a U.S delegate for the newly established United Nations. Through out the 1940's the amount of women in the workforce increased by 25-35 percent. In the book Born for Liberty, by Sara Evans, emphasizes on how much good Eleanor Roosevelt did in the rights of women. She supported their freedom and tried to understand the aspects of what a freed women is. This was a successful and strong time in women's history.

Women Surviving The Great Depression

Women Surviving The Great Depression


The Great Depression did not affect everyone the same way. Many rich people felt no impact at all, and were oblivious to the suffering of others.The Depression changed the family in dramatic ways. Many couples delayed marriage - the divorce rate dropped sharply (it was too expensive to pay the legal fees and support two households). As a result, women during this time abandoned their husbands completely. 

Women found their status being enhanced by their new roles and responsibilities. Black women especially found it easier to obtain work than their husbands. Either it was working as domestic servants, clerks, textiles workers and other occupations. This employment increased their status and power in the home, gaining them a new voice in domestic decisions.

The unemployment that men faced,  was a harder hit psychologically than women were. Since men were expected to provide for their families, it was humiliating to have to ask for assistance. Although some argued that women should not be given jobs when many men were unemployed. Also, in the Sara Evans text, Born for Liberty, one man wrote to his congressman " If less women were employed it would make room for the employment of many of the idle men in our country... in the last analysis women's true place is her home where she can see to the proper raising of her children while the man earns the living."(page 201) This quote supports that men were still against women working and they will always be the easy target in a crisis like this. 

Traditionally female fields of teaching and social services grew. Children started taking on more responsibilities, sometimes finding work when their parents could not. Women started taking a more important role and space in the society through hard times. Women gaining enough confidence and taking over all the jobs that are both in and outside of house is a step in more freedom.  As a result of living through the Depression, some people developed habits of careful saving and frugality, others determined to create a comfortable life for themselves.

Flappers, Freudians and All That Jazz

Flappers, Freudians and All That Jazz

The 1920s were the age of the dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities rather than living on farms. 

Most people are familiar of this era because it was called the "Roaring Twenties." During this time, there was something called the "flapper." A "flapper" women would be described as a unladylike women. Most "flappers" were northern, urban, young, single and middle class women. Young women with a hair cut that is short to an even length of neck and chin, mini short skirts, drank, smoked and were sexually "free" than previous generations. 
At night, flappers engaged in the active city nightlife. They frequented jazz clubs and the shows in the nightclubs. Speakeasies were a common destination, as the new woman of the twenties adopted the same carefree attitude toward prohibition as her male counterpart. Ironically, more young women consumed alcohol in the decade it was illegal than ever before. 

Women were able to vote at last with the 19th Amendment. The Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right for women to vote in the 1920. Millions of women worked in white collar jobs and were able in affording to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. During this time, women also had the opportunity to use birth control devices. The increased availability of birth control devices such as the diaphragm made it possible for women to have few children. 

As mentioned in the Born for Liberty text by Sara Evans, " perhaps the new freedoms and new attitudes of the twenties repsented a necessary experimentation with individualism specially on the part of young women ( p.195). " Women needed a change in the roles that they played and they reached a time were they broke free and did everything that were not allowed or prohibited from them before. This act remind me of setting a kid into a candy world with no rules and observing what happens to them. Women are finally proving who they are in society no matter what the cost is.