Have you ever wondered why women have the rights that they have today and not have to be the way women were supposed to be before? The beginning of all changes started in 1848 and lasted not just till 1920 but even until today. Many leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steimem and Sojourner Truth at the time were supported by both men and women to encourage women to conquer sexism and claim their rights. The whole purpose of the movement is to gain equality for all women. In 1972, Judy Brady wrote an essay “Why I Want a Wife” to reach out to all her readers that men want perfect wives to do everything for them.
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Betty Friedan, after experiencing feelings of depression, self-loathing, and dissatisfaction as a mother and housewife, published The Feminine Mystique in 1963. The book, which focused on the “problem that has no name,” promoted awareness of society’s pressure on women to be seen in a certain way, especially in advertising. As Joyce Hart points out in her essay, this propaganda told women that being a wife and mother was all there was to their lives, and that they had to find meaning by standing in their family’s shadow. Hart states, “As young wives, women sought recognition through their husbands. As mothers, women promoted themselves through their children.
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19 Dec. 2013. Flonder, Polly. "The Immortal Audrey Hepburn." Biography. Vol.
Massive opposition to a demand for women’s equality with men prompted the organization of women to fight collectively for their rights. The birthplace of American feminism was Seneca Falls, New York. Here in 1948, at a landmark convention, the first wave of women’s rights activists gathered. Their primary goal was to obtain voting rights for women (Moore 1992, 21). In the mid 1960’s, the seeds of oppression (which spread from earlier civil movements) were scattered and sown among other dissatisfied women.
Ultimately, the release of The Feminine Mystique in the early 1960, Betty Friedan’s work revealing women’s grievance toward their “perfect family life” caught attention of women across the country. The ideology of perfect housewife began to shift as the American women began to seek for the meaning of their marriages and their position in society, which led to the cultural shift towards feminism in the 1960s. Women in 1950s The American society in the 1950s was mainly based on family that the roles of male and female were ... ... middle of paper ... ...ov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm. Witt, Linda, Karen M. Paget, and Glenna Matthews. Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American Politics.