Women In The 1970's

With the Second World War came the introduction and integration of women into the workforce, as their husbands, and many of the men which the country had relied upon for labor were fighting in the war. Figures such as Rosie the Riveter, and depictions of women as strong and hard-working became common in advertisements and magazines. When these veterans came home, there was an expectation that the women would give up their jobs and remain at home, husband and child being their paramount priorities. Although this ideal was shown widely in the media, the depiction of the ‘ideal woman’, there was a tremendous increase in women in the workforce. However, no extreme shifts or movements came out of this decade. The 1960s brought about tremendous change,

The women who were most affected by the systemic oppression were sidelined in Second Wave Feminism, as their perspectives differed from those of the women who had experienced the difficult expectations of the 1950s. While forerunners of Second Wave Feminism were vital in exposing protest among women and housewives, the fight for liberation was still relatively restricted. The passage of necessary legislation was able to happen in the 1960s, but there was still a high amount of dissatisfaction among those that felt neglected by the passing of the laws. While many women chose to take action politically, others turned to personal ways of making change, which preoccupied themselves with equity between men and women, as well as a countercultural way of life. The personal and political were separated, and the government was shunned, and viewed as distasteful. The hippie movement is often credited with sexual freedom, egalitarian values and equity among its members, but ‘women of the counterculture’ experienced sexism, and were often forced into very traditional roles within their

Many women within the counterculture believed that they would be achieving equality, as the movement promised, by freeing themselves of governmental control, but this turned out to be a distortion, as the sexual liberation which the hippie movement prided itself on still benefited men the most. Sexual liberation was free for men, as it wasn’t followed by consequences for them, while women were the ones deemed responsible if they became pregnant with an unwanted child. Alexandra Jacopetti Hart explains that “Countercultural men were sexist, and were perfectly comfortable with relegating women to subordinate and subservient