Were things in the past really that bad for women? (gays, cousins)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
80% of women back then weren't diagnosed as manic depressive(bipolar) with schizophrenic tendencies and multiple personality disorders like they are today..
wonder why?..
Maybe because they were actually contributing to the family unit allowing men to be men... women to be women, everyone played their roles and society functioned as a whole much better.
Back then both men and women listened to their spirits..
Unlike today where women have gotten so far away from their spirits they need pain meds to make the spiritual pain/depression stop
I'm a woman who listened to her spirit and mine said I didn't have to play a role for anybody or anything, especially for society. If society needs to clip the wings of its of women who want to fly just so it can be a functioning society, then better it lays right where it fell. I'll see society drop dead in the dust before I quit flying.
Were things worse before? I think having birth control was probably the best thing that ever happened to women. I remember my neighbor saying she was so scared she was going to get pregnant again. She was a Catholic who didn't believe in birth control. I think today she would be using it.
My aunt had a miscarriage and she was happy she didn't have to have another baby and worry about how to feed it. My mother ended up having 3 kids using that wonderful rhythm method and she always said she never wanted kids. That's what us kids grew up with. She used to tell my brothers that if the pill had come along a year sooner, they would never have been born.
Married women couldn't apply for credit cards without their husband's signature. They were supposed to put up with their husbands indiscretions (infidelities) and not say anything. Likewise, if they were beaten by their husbands, they weren't able to have their husbands arrested or prosecuted for it. If they tried, they'd be beaten again and worse.
Men who slept around were sowing their wild oats. Women who slept around were considered sluts. If a woman was pregnant out of wedlock, she would be forced to get married to the father of the child or forced to give the baby up.
Many women were sexually abused in the workplace on a constant basis. At the worst, they were told to sleep with their boss if they wanted to keep their jobs and at best it was belittling harassment.
The worst thing about the 40s and 50s was women had very little recourse to remedy any injustices. If you were demoted or fired because you were pregnant, or if you weren't hired or not paid an equal wage just because you were a woman, if your boss insisted on fondling you, or if your husband withheld any monetary support after you divorced him, you had no way to seek justice for yourself because no one would help you.
My mom always told us the same thing - be able to support yourself.
Business school was encouraged, because as a secretary I'd "meet someone", and "marry well" (probably the boss), who could "support me" (and I wouldn't have to work). Or a kindergarten/elementary school teacher (except I couldn't stand kids). Or nursing (I'd marry a doctor and wouldn't have to work).
Growing up in a typical suburban neighborhood, few mothers I knew worked. They cooked, cleaned (the ones who didn't have someone "in" to do it once or twice a week, that is), played cards, went to PTA meetings and teas, and spent a lot of time drinking coffee at each others' houses and gossiping on the phone (my own mother sometimes found this very annoying when we still had a party line). They had plenty of free time to be homeroom mothers, Girl Scout leaders or Boy Scout den mothers. One friend's mother worked part time in a sandwich shop for personal "fun money". My aunt, who lived next door, was a cafeteria "lunch lady" part time, which allowed her to earn some "fun money" and be home long before my uncle was, in time to make his dinner. It wasn't that women "couldn't" have a career...I don't think they WANTED one. One of my best childhood friends graduated from nursing school, married a man with a six figure income who bought her a huge house, and never used her nursing diploma after that.
I never wanted a career, just a good job...and I married, but not well enough to "not have to work". I'm glad I had my business school diploma to rely on. I was always able to get a decent paying job when I needed one. At one very well paying job over 20 years ago, I was told by HR that I was hired at my requested salary because the 60-something year old V.P. wanted a secretary who could both take shorthand and was "easy on the eyes". He was never fresh or inappropriate, he just wanted someone he could "stand looking at" when giving dictation. I worked for him for three years, until he retired. He was always kind and gracious, a perfect gentleman.
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 03-12-2018 at 12:46 AM..
So as long as a few women could afford it and their families supported their getting an Ivy League education then the rest could just go to hell? Cherry picking a few lucky women and the opportunities they had doesn't mean women had nothing to complain about...and they still had more to complain about than men - back then the earliest wage studies said women made about 50 cents on the dollar - at least now we're up to 80 cents or so on average.
My mom was a dirt poor small town Pennsylvania Dutch depression kid. She went to Penn on a full academic scholarship. It’s no different than now. If you have the talent, top schools will find a way to get the tuition paid. Back then, average people didn’t go to college and there wasn’t the sense of entitlement that average people with a glorified certificate of attendance at a 3rd tier state school should have a white collar professional career track. At least in academia, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of gender bias in compensation in the 1960s. Corporate? Yeah. It’s still an issue.
I believe as we learn more about mental health and how to treat it, there are more diagnoses, both for women and for men.
I'm still waiting for anything that indicates that 80% of women are currently diagnosed as manic depressive(bipolar) with schizophrenic tendencies and multiple personality disorders.
My mom was a dirt poor small town Pennsylvania Dutch depression kid. She went to Penn on a full academic scholarship. It’s no different than now. If you have the talent, top schools will find a way to get the tuition paid. Back then, average people didn’t go to college and there wasn’t the sense of entitlement that average people with a glorified certificate of attendance at a 3rd tier state school should have a white collar professional career track. At least in academia, there wasn’t a heck of a lot of gender bias in compensation in the 1960s. Corporate? Yeah. It’s still an issue.
Do you have any citation to prove lack of gender bias in academia? No academics among the women asking for pay parity?
I believe as we learn more about mental health and how to treat it, there are more diagnoses, both for women and for men.
I'm still waiting for anything that indicates that 80% of women are currently diagnosed as manic depressive(bipolar) with schizophrenic tendencies and multiple personality disorders.
You will get nothing because the poster HAS nothing with the 80% number they pulled out of . . the air. And the poster has now moved onto constipation and IBS so . . .
Regarding the military, it is women themselves who have fought for years to be allowed to be in combat roles, and men who refused to let them until pretty recently.
In WWII, it was women who staffed the munitions factories once all the men were gone, women who made their weapons and equipment (remember Rosie the Riveter?). Once the men came back, the women were no longer allowed to keep those jobs, as an aside.
I remember during the Vietnam war, there was a discussion of if women were also being assigned to the military as were young men, and if it would have changed the way most families looked at the draft. They expected their sons to become soldiers, but not their daughters. I think it would have changed the perception, along with changing the image. Perhaps it would have made some less insistant that everyone must do their part.
It certainly would have changed the image of women quite suddenly and harshly, and probably added even more unknowns to the social storm which came about then and redefined our world.
I remember that my mom worked for Disney doing animation cells after the war, and when she married my dad, it was just expected that she would quit because now she had a husband to take care of... She seldom complained, but would say once in a while how she always wondered how it would have gone if she had been able to stay.
This has become quite a feisty thread! Just scanned the responses and unsurprisingly see lots of entries from women (and quite a few men) listing discrimination against women in earlier decades as well as reports of their frustration in having opportunities blocked.
Also lots of posts from men explaining that they are wrong because things were actually ok or equally bad for men. Again, not surprising.
What I am confused by is the anger, for want of better term, of some of the entries from men saying the feminists were wrong (bold text, all caps, agressive phrasing). Discussing whether women were discrimminated against 40 or 50 years ago hardly seems a reason to raise blood pressure now. Maybe for the women who lived it, but men?.
Yes, DaveWA, it's like having the same old discussions in the 1970s. The issues hurt me (and women) to the bone and involve the most intimate and painful details of our own lives and some men are just blowing it off with the same arguments. I feel like these discussions were just recycled. Well, coming from my age of 64 and the likely age of recipients on this forum, maybe they *are* the same people! Certainly the same era.
I have a lot of hope for younger men, who grew up with working mothers, girls in school alongside in class, knowing women who used birth control, the different images in TV and movies, the whole social context being different. Those of our age grew up before the big changes and matured afterward. It's like one foot straddling each side of a big change in social context.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
and she always said she never wanted kids. That's what us kids grew up with. She used to tell my brothers that if the pill had come along a year sooner, they would never have been born. 
