“Times indeed were changing”

Early 19^th century in the U.S, women’s housework was not considered real work because work consisted of getting a profit. Times were changing between 1960s and 1970s. Around the period, most women began to speak up. One of them is Betty Friedan. She wrote “The Feminine Mystique.” According to her, she spoke “The ‘mystique’ that Friedan spoke of was the image of the woman as mother, as wife, living through her husband, through her children, giving up her own dreams for that.”(505). And she mentioned that women should have a creative work of her own for the women. In the 60s’ women did not have choice to work outside, and give up their dreams for their families. However, the end of 60s the society changed that women had 40% of entire employee.

Moreover, “more important, people were beginning to speak of ‘Women’s Liberation.’” This movement represented by organizations. Witch was an organization for radical women. They said “There is no joining WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules.”(508) Women became strong and learned self-defense to protect them from sexual discrimination. Because, the law and government did not do anything for women, the only way they got rights was took action and protest themselves. This movement occurred in 1967. Women’s group had lobby President Johnson to banned sex discrimination in federally connected employment.

As feminist movements occurred, other movements also occurred by the Native Americans. Native Americans were attacked and subdued by the white invaders. They were forced to become a part of civilization but they never forget their root and culture. Moreover, the government violates every single treaty between them and the Indians. Indians wants their land back and their rights. This represents the movements that Indians resist both physical resistance and the artifacts of white culture. Also, “Indians were already gathering their energy for resistance, thinking about how to change their situation, beginning to organize.”(525) They already take action for their rights. Consequently, Indians were trying to take their rights and their land from white invaders. This represent as occupied Alcatraz Island in 1969. They want to show they could rebuild the land and make it a Native American Studies for Ecology. And the change was happening in the schools, teachers began throwing away textbooks that did not include or ignore Indians. There was a general rejection against oppressive and artifact.

“The law cannot do it for us. We must do it for ourselves. Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes…. We must replace the old, negative thoughts about our femininity with positive thoughts and positive action…”

Shirley Chisholm was a black Congresswoman during the 1970s, when she decided gender inequality could no longer be tolerated. It was no longer acceptable for women to be treated merely as housewives, trophies or human beings without the ability to decide what she can do. If men were able to do whatever they desired, then why shouldn’t women do the same? Due to the unequal treatment, many women fought for laws to be written in order to equalize the playing field for both genders. But, Chisholm believed that actions speak louder than words and that in order to change how women are treated, women must defy the stereotype that society has created for them and create a new view for women.

To further the push for female equality, English suffragette Christabel Pankhurst said:

“Remember the dignity
of your womanhood.
Do not appeal,
do not beg,
do not grovel.
Take courage
join hands,
stand beside us.
Fight with us. …”

Before women could fight for equal treatment, Pankhurst believed that they should start by fighting for their bodies. Men would view young women as “sex plaything”, pregnant women as “helpless”, and middle aged and old women as discardable items that were no longer beautiful. In order to change this view, Pankhurst believed that women should stand up for themselves and have confidence in themselves no matter what situation they face. By doing so, they will be able to break free from the “biological prison” that had been created by men and society in order to keep women as caged helpless creatures that were reliant on men.

Zinn includes these individuals because like the others, they demonstrate that it was time for the inequality that women had to face to be abolished. Zinn includes these women because they come from different ethnic backgrounds and yet they both fought for the same belief; the belief that although women were biologically different from men, their thoughts and actions were just as powerful as those from a man. If they were just as capable as a man, then they should be treated the same and so they demanded change.

What distinguishes one person from another is what that person is thinking and how he or she is able to express his or her thoughts.  “The only way for for a woman, as  for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own” Friedan concludes in her book, The Feminine Mystique. In the 1960’s woman had low skill level jobs as secretaries, house maids, sales woman, nurses or stay at home mom’s, but that did not count since there was no salary attached. These jobs restricted woman from becoming independents and kept them as sex objects and mentally slow.

“The Problem” that was unspoken and kept hidden was in the homes of every woman world wide. Woman were “a man’s wife [and] is the show window where he exhibits the measure of his achievement..The woman who cultivates a circle of worthwhile people, who belongs to clubs, who makes herself interesting and agreeable…is a help to her husband.” Zinn brings this quote to show what role woman were perceived to have. It was not two partners running a house together it was a single ruler, the man, who was the face of the house with the woman running the “behind the scenes” allowing for the face, the man, to inherit the credit. Woman were essentially robots doing everyday things without any meaning. No one was there to applaud the hard work a woman put into herself. That was the unspoken problem.

During 1960s and 1970s, many changes occurred in the U.S. In fact, By 60s a variety of values were standardized by the society. For example of gender role, Men and Women’s roles are predetermined by the social gender definition. Also, education system played a role to form such a gender role. However, the socially standardized concepts changed in the 70s. After World War II, various groups began to express their needs; accordingly, the society became more complex one where the various inter-relationships were mixed together. As a variety of changes appeared spontaneously, people got confused with the standardized ideas and started to discuss in an open places.

Zinn, in his book, introduces Betty Friedan as a pioneering, strong and influential feminist at that time. In fact, Friedan was one of the representatives who led the women’s movement in the 60s by her book “The Feminine Mystique.” According to her book, the life of middle class housewives of 60s was like:

Just what was the problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say “I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.” Or she would say, “I feel as if I don’t exist.” Sometimes…. “A tired feeling … I get so angry with the children it scares me. … I feel like crying without any reason.”

Using this quote, Zinn points out that since women in the 60s did not have choice to speak up and actively work with men, they had to give up all the dreams and concentrate on their families. Therefore, loss of meaning of life led them to feel empty and that was motivation to provoke another women movement.

Entering 70s, the women movement took place all over the places by the women who had opinion to speak up and stand up in the society and brought out the result. The movement led a lot of women to begin to decide not giving up their dreams and not sacrificing themselves for their families.  As the result, they started organizing their own union and insisted equal opportunity with men. Zinn introduces one of the women’s opinions that represented the 70s’ circumstance, Dorothy Bolden.

In 1970, Dorothy Bolden, a laundry worker in Atlanta and mother of six, told why in 1968 she began organizing women doing housework, into the National Domestic Workers Union. She said: “I think women should have a voice in making decisions in their community for betterment. Because this woman in the slum is scuffling hard, and she’s got a very good intelligent mind to do things, and she’s been overlooked for so many years. I think she should have a voice.”

As you can see, throughout her saying, how actively women started to express their needs regardless where they are and what they do. However, women’s voice was not limited in social rights. They started to express the suppressed unfairness that had never revealed for a long time for the reason of shame and embarrassment. Zinn says that one of the most influential book disclosing to the public about the women’s biological issues was “The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective called Our Bodies, Ourselves.” According to Zinn, this book contained ”an enormous amount of practical information, on women’s anatomy, on sexuality and sexual relationships, on lesbianism, on nutrition and health, on rape, self-defense, venereal disease, birth control, abortion, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause.”

Consequently, this movement brought out result in a political way. In 1967,  President Johnson signed an executive order banning sex discrimination in federally connected employment, and in the years that followed, women’s groups demanded that this be enforced.