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sexual double standards, media images of females, abortion, militarism and the
Vietnam War, workplace harassment, and domestic violence. By the 1970s,
women’s issues, generally referred to as feminism, the fundamental notion that
females should have equal rights to men, were thus at the forefront of
American political life.
The first indication that women would be included in the political dialogue
of the 1960s came when John Kennedy, right after his election, appointed a
Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to assess women’s economic
and legal status. The Commission reported problems like job discrimination,
unequal pay, lack of child care, and legal inequities in divorce and credit, and
that led to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 , which required that women and men
receive the same wages for the same work. Just as importantly that year, Betty
Friedan, a writer and labor activist, produced her classic book, The Feminine
Mystique, which hit the best-seller list. Friedan's book was mostly about and to
affluent women, but her words seemed to have meaning for large numbers of
American females. Friedan compared suburban domesticity to a “comfortable
concentration camp” [similar to what Ginsberg and the Beatniks had said] and
argued that women’s problems were “a problem of identity—a stunting or eva-
sion of growth that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique.” To millions of
women—especially educated, middle-class housewives—Friedan’s book seemed
to describe their lives and describe a shared experience, and the issues she raised
would remain central to the Women’s Movement throughout the decade.
Lillian B. Rubin was an example of the kind of woman about whom Friedan
spoke. She was intelligent enough to graduate High School at age 15, but went
straight into a secretarial job. “For a girl of my generation and class, college
was not a perceived option,” she observed. To her working-class mother, having
“a daughter who worked at a typewrite in a ‘clean’ office—yes this was high
achievement.” Yet Rubin knew she could do more, so at age 39, married and
with a family, she became a clinical psychotherapist and took a Ph.D. from the
University of California at Berkeley. From there, she wrote several well regard-
ed books about the “crippling effects” of sex and class norms, examining topics
like the American dream, mid-life crises in women, and marriage. There is no
way of knowing how many women as intelligent as Lillian Rubin graduated
from high school, got jobs, and raised families, but did not, like her, go back and
continue her education and make a notable mark in her field. Such was the
plight of women before the modern feminist movement.