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The Making of Modern America
Robin Mccreery Western Governors University WGU Student ID#000322893

The Making of Modern America 2 In America Feminism, the quest for women’s Equality is part of women’s collective desire to be recognized as participating members of our society. The equality movement was rife with ongoing struggles women faced to find equality in the public’s eye. After the Great Depression and 2 world wars, people looked for fulfillment in their private lives; an expression of their commitment to both home and family with distinctive roles divided between men and women. Career choices for women were limited leaving many women with the feeling of dissatisfaction outside social defined gender roles, a feeling of Isolation; a wanting for more. (Mary B. Norton, Jane Kamensky, Carol Sheriff, David W. Blight, Howard F. Chudacoff, Fredrick Logevall, Beth Bailey, and Debra Michales, 2015). In both “The Problem has no name” and “Giving Women the Business” women of late twentieth century (60’s, 70’s, and 80’s) had to deal with trying to balance the choices between being Independent , achieving self-satisfaction, and the reality of the two. Betty Friedan was an inspiring writer, known for her role as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW), a social activist, housewife, and freelance writer who launched the second wave of the feminist movement with the publication of her book “The Feminine Mystique” (Parry Manon, 2010). With the writing of “The Problem that has no name”, Betty Friedan became the voice of millions of women across America with the words “Is this all”. With these words she describes the deep emotions of thousands of educated, middle-class women who felt unhappy, unrewarded, and guilty for not being content with their lives as a suburban house wife of the 1950’s. Most experts in the mid-twentieth century told women that a truly feminine woman did not want an education or career. They were scared into thinking that education would hurt their chances of getting married, an opinion that was reinforced with magazine articles, columns, and popular books of the time. As a result people married young, the average age for women to marry dropped from 20 to 17 with most girls getting
The Making of Modern America 3 married before they left high school (Norton, Kamensky, Sheriff, Blight, Chudacoff, Logevall, Bailey, and Michales, 2015). As the marring age in America dropped, the proportion of women attending collage also dropped , down from 47% to just 35% “ a new degree of Ph. T: Putting the husband through “ B.Friedan (1963) had arrived. “The Problem That had no name” would be buried for years for many American women, but Friedan writing from experience as a housewife, would start a wave of political change, a change to self-satisfaction as thousands of women saw their own faces staring back at them in pages of her writings (B. Friedan, 1963). In” Giving Women the Business: On Winning, Losing, and Leaving the Corporate Game” (1997) Barbra Jones a Senior Editor of Harper’s Magazine, discussed the problems women face in the corporate world with her peers Anita Blair, a CEO to an Independent Women’s Forum, founding partner of Welty & Blair, Member of the Virginia Military Institute’s Board of Visitors; Barbara Ehrenreich, political essayist columnist, social critic, and author; Jeanne Lewis, is the Senior Vice President retail and small businesses marketing of Staples Inc.; Arlie Russell Hochschild, Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, author; Elizabeth Perele McKenna, former Associates Publisher of Bantam Books, Former Publisher of Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, William Morrow, Avon Books, and author of “When Work Doesn’t Work Anymore: Women, Work, Identity “ (B. Jones, B. Ehrenreich, J. Lewis, A. R. Hochschild, and E. P. McKenna, 1997). Betty Friedan’s “Second wave “had helped pave the way to success for the Women activist of the 1970’s. The success of the 1970’s was a pivotal moment for Feminism movement all across America, but women still faced discrimination. Women were not offered Sport scholarships, could not sit on a juror. Help wanted ad’s asked for either men or women only, few were in the military and only 4% were attorneys. All of this would change by the end of the centenary, with the help of

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(NOW) The National Organization for Women which helped women make long strives to becoming independent. NOW emerged in 1966 as a small group of educated Professional women who hoped to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by lobbying and pressuring the (EEOC) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. By 1970 NOW had 3000 members with 100 chapters nationwide. (Norton et al., 2015). NOW continues to expose workplace issues, each of the women in “Giving Women the Business “discusses some of the issues they encountered in the American workforce. Though things have changed from the 1950’s for women in the workforce, women still had a difficult time, with only 46% of the working population being female they were getting paid 75 % less than their male counterparts, with only 2% of them working for a fortune 500 company, and .5% of that get to be CEO’s Barbra Jones (1997). For women in the workforce nothing must seem more important than the job, long hours are required, and family balance is sacrificed, these are some of the unwritten rules of success explain Elizabeth Pale McKenna (1997). While the structure of Corporate America is changing, it is not fast enough or big enough because without the people it matters most to change will not occur. Unfortunately women have shut up, become complacent, and afraid of losing their jobs. To make a change in the corporate world women need to continue with the unfinished Feminist revolution by making it a human revolution. Start making America listen (Jones. et al., 1997). Though today’s Women are still having to making choices for the corporate world, the balancing of their lives may become less of a struggle. “The Problem That had no name “and “Giving Women the Business “ show the choices that were available to women in the 1950’s are not necessarily what continues in the mid-twentieth century, but is still part of the same battle . A battle witch shows you with a little bit a independence and a lot of self-satisfaction you can find the balance of the two, a reality worth living.
The Making of Modern America 5 References
Friedan, B., The problem that has no name. The Feminine Mystique (1963); Keetley, Dawn and Pettegrew, John, (2005), Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism (pp 7-16). N.P.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing. B. Jones, B. Ehrenreich, J. Lewis, A. R. Hochschild, and E. P. McKenna. Harper’s Magazine (1997); Keetley, Dawn and Pettegrew, John, (2005), Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism (pp 509-521). N.P.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing.
Norton, Kamensky, Sheriff, Blight, Chudacoff, Logevall, Bailey, Michales. A People & A Nation: A History of the United States, (2015).
Parry, M. (2010). Betty Friedan: Feminist Icon and Founder of the National Organization for Women. American Journal of Public Health, 100(9), 1584-1585.
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