Women's Rights In The 1960s

One of the many social issues brought to life during the 1960s was gender equality. While the open struggle for women’s rights had been more or less present since the 19th century or even earlier, the liberal and generally revolutionary atmosphere of America in the 1960s proved to be an inopportune time to draw more attention to the issues surround women’s rights and gender equality. Women were growing weary of their traditional roles of housewives and mothers. Women traditionally gave up any ambition for a career when they got married and began having children. Although they were well educated, their education was often never applied outside of the classroom. Women went to college, found a husband, left college, and started a family. That

Countless women worked in place of the men during the war and were not too pleased when their husbands, fathers, and sons came home and took their jobs away again. In fact, divorce rates skyrocketed after World War II due this this as well as other issues (Allport). Women were starting to realize their unhappiness with their current role in society. This discontent was only heightened when more and more wives were becoming pregnant after their husbands returned from war. This led to even more women being placed back into their traditional role of housewife and mother. Women in general were growing weary of this traditional life. They wanted a change, but didn’t really have much to complain about from an outsider’s perspective. Many of these situations occurred in seemingly well-to-do American families; the white families living in the new suburbs of America. They had money, they were well educated, had multiple children, and seemed to have all of the things they needed to live a happy life. So why were the women so

Friedan herself went through this revelation of unhappiness. She discusses how she grew up in a middle-class family, went to college, went to graduate school, met a man, dropped out, and became a housewife. The Feminine Mystique outlines the problems of the middle-class white women through a series of interviews with suburban housewives (Friedan). The interviews review the honest opinions and feelings of these women. Some say that they feel incurably tired all of the time, even though they get enough sleep. Some say they resent their husbands secretly for being able to have a life away from the home and from the children. However the overwhelming majority say that they don’t know why they are unhappy. Many don’t even know if they are unhappy. They simply feel discontent. They know that they shouldn’t, but they still do. All of the women interviewed share this view, however no one talked about it. That is why Friedan called it “The Problem That Has No Name” (Friedan). After Friedan published her book in 1963 women began to come together and realize that they were not alone in their discontent. This realization would lead to even larger strides in the women’s movement of the 1960s and