YEARNING FOR PURITY: WORKING WOMEN PART II

I inadvertantly left out my sources for the first part of this post. They are as follows:

SOURCES

http://cct2.edc.org/PMA/modern_women/.
http://www.msad54.org/sahs/socialstudies/finely/1920s/1920HK/women.html.
http://school.discoveryeducation.com
www.wolverhamptonhistory.org.uk/.../20th/guys
http://www.alternet.org/story/48370/-

Now, more on working women of the last century...

THE 1960s…

“More women are getting jobs outside the home. By 1969, 43 percent of women are in the workforce, up from 25 percent in 1940. And more of these women are wives and mothers. In 1960, over 30 percent of married women work, up from 15 percent in 1940.”

These number surprised me…I didn’t realize that that many women were working outside of the home in the 1960s. Possibly that was because my own mom was a homemaker during this decade…She didn’t have to go to work until my youngest brother was nine. I was a teenager at the time and so consider myself lucky that I got to have my mom at home for the majority of my growing up years.

Oddly enough, history nearly repeated itself, and I was home until my youngest was eight. It is sad to me that he didn’t get a mom who stayed home and cooked for him. Unlike the girls, I think that his memories do not entail all of the homemade dinners, gardening, and canning. But…I can’t turn back the clock.

Feminism was rapidly rising in the 1960s…PAUSE…

I just had a sweet experience…Boy, who I just mentioned and who is leaving tomorrow for college, just came in. He has been cleaning out the attic and brought down a couple of mementos. He had with him a file box, with labels that I made him for homeschooling, and a cape that he used to fly around in…The cape was an old towel that I had sewed a button on. They were dear to him, and that meant a lot to me. So…I guess that he DOES have some fond memories of growing up!

Back to the 60s…

This picture says it all…

You can tackle domesticities and an outside job at the same time…

I’m not sure who they were trying to fool, but a whole nation bought into the myth…

“The Women's Movement of the 1960s and 1970s had its roots in the new opportunities and freedoms for women during World War II. Following war many women who were forced to return to their roles as housewives grew frustrated and suffocated, as the women who began to enter or reenter the workforce grew dissatisfied with their second class status, clearly visible in little to no room for advancement, unequal pay for the same work (fifty-nine cents on a man's dollar), sex-segregated help wanted ads, and the legality of sexual discrimination and sexual harassment, which did not exist as a legal concept at the time.”

As to sexual equality, I feel that the Lord made us all equal, as far as our worth. I also feel that men and women are different and were made for different purposes. Due to the latter, the women’s liberation movement was not all good for sure…

I like that my husband is strong and can take care of tasks that I can’t…I don’t feel any need to prove that I am just like a man, because I am not. Likewise, he doesn’t feel any need to prove that he is like a woman…

I also very much enjoyed taking my husband’s name when I got married and feel special when I use the title “Mrs.”. To me, hyphenated names are a ludicrous, and the title "Ms." is ridiculous.

These things all came about during the same decade that prayer got taken out of schools. What in the world are we trying to prove anyway? Do we just want to throw God away and, at the same time, become a unisex society?