Gender Roles In The 1950's And 1960s

Did you know that women and people of color did not always possess the opportunities they have now? Evident throughout history, the belief of the superiority of white males over other genders and ethnic groups, began to shift during the Cold War era in the United States. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, gender roles and civil rights issues were very prominent in society, which in turn, affected many individuals in relation to their work opportunity and their social life.

To start out, for centuries people of color were deemed to be the less superior race due to geographical location and racial bias in the u tied States. As a result of this, they where often denied the opportunity to create better lives for themselves and their family. Throughout

These three black females (Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson) are employed through NASA and face these prejudices everyday. This is portrayed through many events through the film. In the beginning, the car they are using to get to work breaks down, a cop car pulls up and the women are frightened what the cop will do to them (this is still present in today’s society). Another example of this is the overall idea of segregation. This is presented in the film in multiple different ways, through the segregated schools, lunchrooms, churches and restrooms. This stigma lead many to believe that those who where of color did not deserve the same as them and in turn this created the segregation of races. In The Black Upsurge Against Racial Segregation it can be quoted saying “ With all the struggle and all the achievements, we must face the fact, however, that the Negro still lives in the basement of the Great Society. He is still at the bottom, despite the few who have penetrated to slightly higher levels. Even where the door

The idea of men being the breadwinner for a family while the women stays home and and takes care of the children had been the “American Dream” for sometime, but with the Cold War era approaching many women wanted and needed to be in the workforce. In the film Hidden Figures it presents the struggles women faced in the workplace, wether it be being paid less than the males for the same position (still happens today) or not even being allowed to apply for a position solely based on the ramifications that she is a female. Main character, Mary Jackson was denied her right to apply for a engineering position based on the fact that she was a black female, another example of this is when Jim Johnson is speaking to Katherine Johnson and he is in disbelief that NASA allows women to work for them. Men at this time period firmly believed that their wives were to stay home while they went out and worked, but once the war began to pick up many of the jobs left behind by men going off to war didn’t have anyone to fill them so, they turned to women. In The Feminine Mystique and the Women’s Rights Movement it says “ the problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American Women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban struggled with it alone. As she made