Were things in the past really that bad for women? (gay, dumped)

[maciesmom]

Originally Posted by jrkliny

Yes, manipulative, but also almost entirely female behaviors. These were only two examples. It does not take a lot of study to see that "society" can short change young girls when it comes to self confidence, the ability to do things for themselves. When it comes to makeup, perfume and the rest, is that designed to be "manipulative"? I think so.

Perhaps that evolved because it was often the only power one had? It is human (not only female) nature to use available resources to survive.

[charlygal]

Originally Posted by maciesmom

Perhaps that evolved because it was often the only power one had? It is human (not only female) nature to use available resources to survive.

Exactly. Thank you.

[Bungalove]

Originally Posted by Oldhag1

Well how nice. It, along with Home Ec, was required of every female in my school. Amazing how every female in the school must have been unworthy of being in advanced academics - but that kind of emphasizes the problem with the way women were viewed, doesn’t it?

I was responding to another poster as to why I attended a "secretarial school" in the 1980's, which that poster insisted simply didn't exist at that time. I have NO idea what point you're trying to make. In my high school we had three "tracks": advanced academic (college bound), the business group, and general studies (i.e. the "slow learners"). I'm not saying it was politically correct, but in 1968 that's the way it was. Only "girls" in the business and the general studies groups took typing so they could get jobs right out of high school. The rest of us were expected to go right into college.

[ClaraC]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Skeffington

When I was in business school, we had to take a semester-long "charm" class, which was as mandatory to graduating as passing the typing finals. We had to stand up, the teacher inspected our figures, and told us whether or not we needed a "garment" (girdle). We learned how to walk (with a book on our heads), descend stairs, how to get out of a car in a poised ladylike fashion, how to sit like a lady (ALWAYS crossing legs at the ankles) and which fork to use with which course at dinner. We also received milk of magnesia facials and had our eyebrows plucked. I guess it was all part of being groomed to marry the rich boss.

Hmmm. I don't know about making it semester long, but Dow Chemical had a type of "charm school" for their top execs, who were male. And might be likely to appear in public on an executive board, or even in the media. Wear fashionable ties, wear dark socks and make sure they're high enough that your fleshy leg doesn't show, how to raise your head when you speak and not mumble, clip your ear and nose hairs and trim your eyebrows, etc. This was also in the 70's.

[parentologist]

I remember my mother was constantly asked about her periods and whether she was pregnant, when she was working as a chemist isolating hormones from animal urine. She was never told that she might absorb the hormones through her skin, which she did! Thank God she didn't have children until over a year after she'd left that job.

I remember my mother wanting to go back to work after she had had two children - my father forbade it. If a woman worked in the 50s, it meant that her husband couldn't support the family. And she had no power, no recourse.

I remember the same issue coming up after she had had two more children, and again my father forbade it. But now it was the late 60's, and she just ignored him, and went back to work. He wound up grateful for her earnings and excellent health insurance, when his business went down the tubes in the 70's.

So many other examples, of how women had no power, and were essentially in the same status as pre-adolescent children, before 1970 or so. I am eternally grateful to the women, my mother and her generation, who made the women's revolution of the late 60's and 1970's. I had a front seat view of this, growing up. I know that today's women who claim not to be feminists, but have the same rights as men - the right to manage their own finances, the right to privacy regarding their bodies and their reproductive choices, the right to not be raped by anyone, including their husbands - would feel very differently if they were suddenly transported back to the 1950s.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the women of the 1960s and 1970s! They're mostly in their 80s and 90s now, or gone. Soon none of them will be left. But they made the USA a better place for women, just as the civil rights activists of the 50s and 60s made the country a better place for people of color.

[netwit]

Originally Posted by reneeh63

Well, I took Shop instead of Home Ec (as well as 2 semesters of drafting and another of graphic arts) but to my dismay Shop class consisted of the guys an inch away from dropping out of school - kind of like the "Breakfast Club" version of shop but I was the sole geek, not very practical and certainly not rigorous in the amount of instruction. But it kinda felt ground breaking

I wasn't allowed to take shop instead of home ec back in the 70s. I could not sew at all and barely got a passing grade. The cooking part of home ec didn't interest me because I already knew how to cook. My brother's mother-in-law who would have been in university in the '60s was told to get a degree in home ec in preparation for being a wife and homemaker, which she did.

My paternal grandmother shocked me as a little girl when she said she had always envied the cashiers in the local store. She longingly said how nice it must be to have people to talk to every day. She was a farmer's wife with eight kids and in those days, it was very difficult to get off the farm and get to a store. It wasn't something you did casually. It shocked me into seeing my grandmother as a person with dreams of her own.

[Jakealope]

I'm reading these posts with interest. I've never understood why so many men don't understand that at least 1/2 of the female population has no desire to stay at home, have kids and be totally dependent on someone else for food, clothing, roof over their head, etc. I mean, most men don't want to live that way, so why do they think women want to live that way? Some women want that lifestyle and that's fine. But I would guess that 1/2 of the women I know do not want that. Lets face it, women had few choices until recently and the legal system was against them. Men stuck together and since they had the money, the important jobs and made the laws, women had few choices. I'm not saying that all men are bad people. But they can be very oblivious to women as individuals. It baffles me the ways they view women. I used to work in a male dominated environment and was amazed at some of the comments men made to women on a regular basis. Sometimes I would ask them if they would say the same thing to a man and they looked like a deer caught in headlights. It's as a though it was a thought that never occurred to them.

I read in a Malcolm Gladwell book that the inventor of the birth control pill designed the 3 week pack with a week of placebos and there was no medical reason for this. The inventor and his colleagues believed women would feel more comfortable with a reliable monthly bleed, even if their periods weren’t as regular beforehand. That is very typical of the way many men think. It wouldn't occur to them to ask women about an issue like that. Just decide for them.

[AZDesertBrat]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Back then, there weren't the antidepressants we have today. But there was valium. A surprising number of women were on some form of tranquilizers, or other mood-managing prescriptions. Wasn't that studied and documented, after Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" came out, exposing that?

I read that book not long after it came out and never could understand how, and why, women could be so depressed they needed 'a pill' to 'get over it'. I got married in Mar. 1961 and lived in a small town on the Oregon coast. Now, that might be why neither I, or any of my friends, seemed to have any problems with depression or being unhappy in our lives. We were all living the life we thought was 'expected' of us and we liked it. Even if we had wanted to go out to work there was very little for women in our small town. The schools, hospitals, offices, etc. but not that many to go around. Most of us worked a 'little job' right out of high school, knowing we'd be getting married at some point and raising a family, so nobody had any goals in mind or was particularly 'ambitious'. We did have one friend who went to work for the post office and she, eventually, retired from there. Nobody thought anything about it, nobody criticized or thought less of her for it. Nobody envied her either. Maybe the women who needed the antidepressants were more sophisticated than we were and did have goals and ambitions.

[Rowan123]

Originally Posted by Sunaimer

Secretaries are now called Administrative Assistants. Just a play on words. We need a woman President. Also, women should support women-owned businesses, doctors, dentists, attorneys, etc. The US has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go as far as equal pay, etc.

We don't need a woman president we need whoever is most qualified for the job, man or woman. If the most qualified person is a man why should a woman be in that position? Of course, the reverse is also true. If a woman is more qualified, she should get the position. I think it's short sighted and does women a disservice to say that they should be chosen solely because they are female.

[AZDesertBrat]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

That might change, if male recruits and officers would stop raping their comrades-in-arms. The military is too hazardous for women, and it's not because of the enemy. Women should not be drafted, until the male troops can control themselves in their presence.

I should probably look it up before writing anything but I'm wondering just what percentage of women this happens to. I remember that Navy scandal. I can't believe that the majority of men CAN'T/WON'T/DON'T "control themselves". I have a friend who's a major something or other in the Air Force and she doesn't think it's as bad as people think. There ARE a lot of 'hook ups' between service people though. Some short lived and some longer. Seems like my friend had a new boyfriend every time she transferred.


When I was 17, and found out my parents had no intention of sending me to college...no money for it...I said, "Okay, I'll join a military service, put in my time and THEN go to college on the GI Bill like Dad did." He came unglued! He called military women everything but white women and had NO respect for them at all. To him they were all "sluts and wh*res". Why? I don't know. Most of the women he knew were nurses, clerks, etc. so why he thought that way is beyond me.