How Did Women Affect America's Culture
For this paper, I have identified two trends that have lasting influence on the United States of America (USA). The social trend that I will be addressing is the impact of young women to the America’s culture.
After the World War 2 (WWII), Americans referred to the decade of the 1920s as the Roaring Twenties because of a varied of factors which include rapid social change, impact of technology on domestic life and the changes in social values. Women started to have more social freedoms and young people start picking up smoking and drinking, despite alcohol were illegal in USA. Furthermore, technologies has greatly impacted on domestic life with the creation of modernization technologies such as indoor plumping, gas stoves that now replace …show more content…
As mentioned by Debbie Reynolds in The Tender Trap (1955), “A women isn’t a women until she’s been married and had children” (pg 652). Education also further enforced these ideas. In school, girls were taught to knit, cook, type and etc; they were also told not to miss out on marriage by pursuing higher education and because of that, only one-third of college women completed their degrees. But there were changes under the way. Increasing number of women entered the workforce and by 1960s, twice as many women worked outside the home as compared to 1940s. One-third of the labor force was women and one out of three married women worked outside the home. Their median wage, however, was less than half that of men. Majorities actually work to augment family income, not to challenge stereotypes and because of that, they are willing to take low-prestige …show more content…
Although the vast majority of American women were homemakers in 1950s and early 1960s, the rising tempo of activism in the 1960s also stirred new self-awareness and dissatisfaction among educated women. Dismayed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s reluctance to enforce the ban on sex discrimination, these women formed the national Organization for Women (NOW), which is a leading feminist group. NOW’s popularity owed much to the publication by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, where she wanted women to “establish goals that will permit them to find their own identity” (pg 678). These women activists gained confidence in their own potential and they also became conscious of their second-class status, as they were sexually exploited and relegated to menial jobs by male
After the World War 2 (WWII), Americans referred to the decade of the 1920s as the Roaring Twenties because of a varied of factors which include rapid social change, impact of technology on domestic life and the changes in social values. Women started to have more social freedoms and young people start picking up smoking and drinking, despite alcohol were illegal in USA. Furthermore, technologies has greatly impacted on domestic life with the creation of modernization technologies such as indoor plumping, gas stoves that now replace …show more content…
As mentioned by Debbie Reynolds in The Tender Trap (1955), “A women isn’t a women until she’s been married and had children” (pg 652). Education also further enforced these ideas. In school, girls were taught to knit, cook, type and etc; they were also told not to miss out on marriage by pursuing higher education and because of that, only one-third of college women completed their degrees. But there were changes under the way. Increasing number of women entered the workforce and by 1960s, twice as many women worked outside the home as compared to 1940s. One-third of the labor force was women and one out of three married women worked outside the home. Their median wage, however, was less than half that of men. Majorities actually work to augment family income, not to challenge stereotypes and because of that, they are willing to take low-prestige …show more content…
Although the vast majority of American women were homemakers in 1950s and early 1960s, the rising tempo of activism in the 1960s also stirred new self-awareness and dissatisfaction among educated women. Dismayed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s reluctance to enforce the ban on sex discrimination, these women formed the national Organization for Women (NOW), which is a leading feminist group. NOW’s popularity owed much to the publication by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, where she wanted women to “establish goals that will permit them to find their own identity” (pg 678). These women activists gained confidence in their own potential and they also became conscious of their second-class status, as they were sexually exploited and relegated to menial jobs by male