Women's Rights In The 1960s

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Civil rights movements are series of nonviolent political movements or protests for equality during 1960s. Almost 100 years after issued by on January, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued a presidential proclamation and executive order purported to change the federal and legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from "slave" to "free" and it was not effective immediately. African Americans in Southern states were still going through unequal world. They were prevented to exercise their rights to vote as citizens of America unless they are white male who has a property. segregation and various forms of oppression were exercised openly, including race-inspired violence not to mention “Jim Crow” …show more content…

They couldn’t further their education and all they were though to dream of was how to be a better wife, mother and housewife, to use their femininity how to get a man to settle with, and in short to not have any other desire and dream in life. The women with a desire greater than being a wife and a mother were thought to be unhappy and portrayed as neurotic. Women with an ambition to be a physician or president and all the other things men were, meant to be discriminated and were a laughing stock. They were thought to peruse a financial dependency on men being wife than career. “Nobody argued whether women were inferior or superior to men; they were just different” (the problem that has no name, p19) although they were not told that they are inferior but they were limited to explore the possibilities and blinded by the false dreams, until they release the significance of having a career and discovering their true dreams. 1960 brought a huge change for women as well. Cultural changes were altering the role of women in American society that more females were entering the paid workforce even though this increased the dissatisfaction among women regarding huge gender disparities in pay and sexual harassment at the workplace. Also among the many changes by the end of the Sixties, many wives of childbearing age were using contraception after the federal government in 1960 approved a birth control pill. They wanted to join the work force and have a further education more than being a mother or wife. This freed many women from unwanted pregnancy and gave them many more choices and freedom in their personal lives. Gradually, Americans came to accept some of the basic goals of the 1960s feminists: equal pay for equal work, an end to domestic violence, an end to sexual harassment, and sharing of responsibility for housework and child