The societal expectations of women look nothing like they did in the 1950s, but for those of us who grew up in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the old messages have a way of lingering long after the world moved on.
My friend sent me a high school home economics workbook page from the 1950s called “How to be a Good Wife.” The workbook advised women to: Have dinner ready; touch up your makeup before your husband arrives home from work; do not complain; speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice; have a cool or warm drink ready for him upon arrival; and other things designed to make the man returning from a hard day’s work comfortable.
A woman’s desires and preferences were secondary. My friend and I laughed at the dated advice. Underlying our reactions, though, was a tacit acknowledgement that we were taught, directly or indirectly, to do these things or things akin to them.
How Feminism Pushed Back
The women’s rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s sought equal rights and greater personal freedom for women. This movement was known as the second wave of feminism, following the first wave of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which focused on women’s legal rights.
Betty Friedan’s bestselling 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, exposed how women had been deadened by domesticity and wanted more. The National Organization for Women was born to champion women’s rights. NOW achieved some of its goals but was riddled with dissention among its ranks.
The Societal Expectations of Women, Decade by Decade
Change is slow and by no means uniform. When I became a teenager in 1977, my rather conservative parents sent me to a “charm” class held at the local department store, Montgomery Ward. The book that came with the course began with, “Why do some girls always look so pretty and act so confident? These girls know how to do the right thing at the right time…. Beauty is learned and earned.”
The book continued to explain:
Among the many attributes that make a person charming are grace, poise, confidence, being interested and interesting, having an attractive appearance and being neat and well groomed…. A girl’s appearance can often mean the difference between success and failure in life’s many roles…. The poised girl maintains calm… and easily and avoids nervous movements of the body….
I learned about makeup, posture, exercise and confidence. Some of the information was not useful as I aged, but at least it was not as overtly sexist as the 1950s home economics book’s text.
In the 1980s, the message became that women could have it all. The popular 1982 commercial for Enjoli perfume emerged in which women heard “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you’re a man!” I can still remember the jingle’s tune.
Women were entering the workforce at unprecedented rates. My law school class was approximately a third women when I attended it in the late 1980s. There were few female partners at the big law firms. We were still subject to sexism and pay disparity, but at least we saw the possibility of being self-sufficient.
From Third Wave to Today
Feminism is the belief in full social, economic and political equality for women, despite attempts to use the term in a derogative fashion. Traditional ideas about what women could do and how they should act were challenged more vigorously in the 1990s with feminism’s third wave, and societal norms continued to be dismantled in the 2000s. A fourth wave of feminism began in the 2010s, focusing on sexual harassment, body shaming and rape culture, among other issues. A key component was the use of social media to highlight concerns.
The massive Women’s March of 2017 crowded streets across the globe, following the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, whose rhetoric was seen as misogynistic, threatening women’s rights. At the time, it was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Worldwide participation was estimated at more than seven million. While the country has yet to elect a female president, consciousness continues to be raised about women’s rights.
What Has Actually Changed
Today, my daughter has even more opportunities than I did. Gender norms have been eroded and differ from when it was assumed that I would have primary childcare responsibility. My daughter’s significant other is a true partner. At-home fathers are not as rare as they were when I was parenting young children.
We still face damaging societal messaging, especially ageism. Pay inequity, erosion of reproductive rights and violence against women still exist. But we each can work to dismantle damaging messaging by challenging what we confront and following our dreams despite any naysayers we encounter, even one conversation at a time. It’s worth asking, too, what makes a woman powerful once she’s seen through all of it.
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About the Author:
Maria Leonard Olsen is an attorney, author, radio show and podcast host in the Washington, D.C., area. For more information about her work, see www.MariaLeonardOlsen.com and follow her on social media at @fiftyafter50. Her latest book, 50 After 50: Reframing the Next Chapter of Your Life, which has served as a vehicle for helping thousands of women reinvigorate their lives, is offered for sale on this website.
