II.WOMEN RIGHTS IN THE 50s The 1950s was known by many as the decade of conformity, meaning both gen-ders were pinned to traditional gender roles. Men worked as the breadwinners while women worked in the houses. This notion, basically makes one understand, that the women rights movement was in its developing phase and being a woman basically meant being a housewife. This makes the disadvantages such as the marriage bar policy and lack of diversity in the movement of women rights in the 1950s outweigh its ad-vantages. Nevertheless, the advantages of women rights movement in the 1950s will be discussed first in this section then the disadvantages will follow. 2.1 ADVANTAGES OF WOMEN RIGHTS IN THE 1950s Although the 50s …show more content…
If one looks up 1950s women, they see a loving woman who cooks, cleans, takes care of the children and most importantly her husband. After the second world war, all that people wanted was peace and tranquillity. The way to achieve that was to create strong families in the societies. The idea of a nuclear family came about, during the cold war era with the help of popular culture. In this process, most women were made to believe that staying and working in the houses rather than pursuing careers, would help their countries. However, 40% of women with children continued to work and chal-lenge societal norms.(‘Women in the 1950s,’ …show more content…
The second wave of feminism, unlike the first wave, was notably more diverse in terms of race, color and sexual orientation. For once, non-heterosexual females and women of color saw their potential and joined the movements. Furthermore, alliances with other progressive movements such as the civil right movement and the gay rights movements made the women rights movement strong-er. The unity with different reformist movements enabled it to incorporate many areas of interest, unlike the first one which solely concentrated on women suffrage rights. The aspects addressed in the 1980s movements included racial matters and different sexual orientations (Epstein, 'What happened to the women’s movement', 2001, para