What Are The Challenges For Women In The 1970's

The early 1970s were a pivotal point in job equality for women that ushered in a new horizon to the workforce and progression of equality for women and men. Following closely to the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement of the 1960s – 1970s gave women the voice to finally move forward alongside their male counterparts. Whereas before, women were expected to follow one path in their lives, a path that hardly left any room for women to be themselves and live their lives. That path was to marry early, start a family, and devote their lives to being a housewife. The Women’s Rights Movement allowed women to reach new heights in the workforce.
The information and statistics in this paper are provided by Table 11.1 from the U.S Bureau
Before the Women’s Rights Movement, society expected very little of women in terms of their capacity to work. Women were pressured to be a housewife, to feed their family, to be a housekeeper while their husbands were at work, and be there tomorrow to do it all over again. After the Women’s Rights Movement, occupations dominated by women through stereotypes would slowly decrease. In the early 1970s, women mainly took occupations that involved caring for others, lower education, and supporting others, such as nurses, elementary school teachers, and receptionist. In the years 1972 and 1983, the percent of nurses, elementary school teachers, and receptionist were high compared to an occupation in engineering most likely from the social norms before the Women’s Rights Movement. In the years 1993 – 2003, the percentage of stereotypical occupations begins to decrease as time goes on. The percentage of women in stereotypical occupations are shown in Figure
We see that there were noticeable stereotypical qualities in the occupations women took between 1972 and 1983, the percentages were higher in occupations in nursing, education, and receptionist which were all the occupations society expected of women. We also see the progression of job equality towards women in occupations that were primarily for men, such as life and physical scientist, lawyers/judges, and firefighters/police officers, helping to close the gender gaps in higher education and higher risk jobs for women. Lastly, we see the overall progression of job equality by seeing the total men and women employed in 1972 and 2003. We see that in 1972, the total employed was 82,153,000 million and of those employed only 38.0 percent were women. This percentage increases to 46.8 percent women employed as the total employed increases to 137,736,000 million. There is an obvious increase in job equality as the percentage of women employed nears 50 percent. These numbers are increasing as time goes on and we can only wonder if job equality becomes uneven again, this time in favor of