Women Movements: The Sixties Women's Movement

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The Sixties Women’s Movement In 1960, the life of American women was limited in almost every aspect, from family life to the workplace. The women were expected to marry in her early 20’s, start a family, and then devote her life to cooking and cleaning and serving her children and husband. They spent 55 or more hours a week on domestic chores. Women, also did not have any legal rights to their husband’s earnings, belongings or property. The husbands would even keep track and take care of all the money the wife had to begin with. If the marriage failed, in order to get a divorce the women had to prove what fault the husband did for it to happen. The women who had jobs during this period were limited to mostly to being a teacher, nurse, or …show more content…

There were two different kinds of movements that took place with feminists and the government. For example, Betty Friedan only wanted to open up the laws that had been made so that they worked for women as well. She wanted women to be able to participate on a public and political level. The more radical movement was about a generation later, and they wanted to completely overthrow the patriarchy that they believed was oppressing women’s lives. The came up with the idea that the “personal is political.” This meant that women had equally significant complications, with their relationships, sexuality, birth control, abortion, body image, marriage, and housework. The feminist movement was to change both the equality of a woman’s political and personal …show more content…

One big political change was in 1972, when Shirley Chisholm was a Presidential Candidate, a fourth of the people said they would never vote for a women as President but by 1996, 5% of women and 8% of men said they would rule out a female Presidential candidate. One of the most profound changes was happening in the bedroom. By the end of the Sixties, more than 80 percent of wives of childbearing age were using contraception after the federal government in 1960 approved a birth control pill. Then in 1965, The Supreme Court (in Griswold v. Connecticut) gave married couples the right to use birth control, presiding that it was protected in the Constitution as a right to privacy. However, millions of unmarried women in 26 states were still denied birth control. In 1970, Feminists challenged the safety of oral contraceptives (the Pill) at well-publicized Congressional hearings. As a result, the formulation of the Pill was changed, and the package insert for prescription drugs came into being. This freed many women from unwanted pregnancy and gave them many more choices, and freedom, in their personal lives. As part of the woman 's quiet sexual revolution, pills gave women control over their future. In a way, the ability to pursue higher education without the thought of pregnancy, gave women more equality in educational achievement. Since women could have a choice to use birth control to finish their education, a

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