Gail Collin's book When Everything Changed not only informs you of the struggles of the women's movement from the 60's til the present, it makes you feel the struggle. The book was written in 2009 and was on the bestseller list. Independence day seems like a good time to revisit the book.
http://www.cleveland.com/...
Collins' book offers this lens for today's young women who might not notice the shoulders under their feet: The "generation that took the risks, filed the suits, held the press conferences, and made the demands were not the ones who benefited."
Nearly everyone knows that Sandra Day O'Connor was armed with a law degree from Stanford, yet the only job offered to her by any California law firm was as a stenographer. (that story still makes me shudder.)
A few anecdotes from the book to whet your appetite:
http://www.newyorker.com/...
“Billie Jean King was the winner of three Wimbledon titles in a single year and was supporting her household with the money she made from tennis,” Collins writes, “but she could not get a credit card unless it was in the name of her husband, a law student with no income.”
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Rolling forward from a quick vignette in 1960 in which a secretary, Lois Rabinowitz, went to court to pay her boss’s speeding ticket, Collins makes it clear that whether it’s 1960 or 2009, secretaries have to do unpleasant things for their bosses. But the nature of those tasks has changed quite a bit. Rabinowitz was rebuked by the judge for wearing slacks. Rebuked, hell. He sent her home to change her clothes, instructed her husband to use a tighter rein and told reporters that it upset him to see “women tearing themselves down from this pedestal.”
http://www.cleveland.com/...
In 1972, a young woman was prohibited from renting an apartment in a New York suburb in her own name "until she got the lease signed by her husband, who was a patient in a mental hospital."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In a 1964 Congressional hearing, when airline executives testified that it was imperative for businessmen that attractive women light their cigars and fix drinks, Representative Martha Griffiths said, “What are you running, an airline or a whorehouse?” and the conversation began to change.
FYI: Griffiths was the first woman to serve on the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means and the first woman elected to the United States Congress from Michigan as a member of the Democratic Party. She was also the person most responsible for including the prohibition of sex discrimination under Title VII in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Thanks Martha!
The next quote from the book, When Everything Changed sums up where we are today. To see where we have been and whose shoulders you have been standing on, please read the book.
"So there you are. American women had shattered the ancient traditions that deprived them of independence and the right to have adventures of their own, and done it so thoroughly that few women under 30 had any real concept that things had ever been different."
Guess what the women in my family are getting for Christmas?!
This book is now out in paperback. http://www.amazon.com/...