The
other day I found a TV channel that plays reruns of the 1960s game show,
Password. The host, Allen Lundt, asked the first contestant, a man, "So
what do you do for a living?"
The
man replied, "I'm an executive in a major marketing company."
Mr. Lundt said,
"That's very impressive!"
The
host turned to the other contestant, a woman, and said, "So what does your
husband do for a living?"
The
woman’s jaw drops. Then she speaks in a voice that is barely audible.
I
have no memory of what she said because I was still processing the unbelievably
chauvinistic question. True, this is the 1960s, so for the host to assume the
woman did not work outside of the home is probably not out of line, but still.
It was pretty rude.
While on the topic of the 60s, I also
recently saw a reference to the 1968 Virginia Slims cigarette slogan: “You've
Come a Long Way, Baby.” This struck me as rather timely. How far have women
come? At least in 1968 we came as far to have an equal opportunity to get lung
cancer.
Dry humor aside, many people do
not realize how late women landed the rights women now have. If you’re thinking
late 1800s to early 1900s, think again. While some progress was made in the
late 1960s, it would take another decade for significant changes.
At the age of 18 in the early
1970s, I blamed the lack of job opportunities more on my age and my having only
a high school education than anything else. I didn’t know I would enter a man’s
world when I accepted a wildland firefighting job with the U.S. Forest Service
in 1976. The words discrimination or sexual harassment were not even in my
vocabulary—at least not at first. That summer, one crewmate told me that women
belonged barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. Another told me women were
weak and helpless, and I should quit and go home. And after several years of
experience, a supervisor told me I couldn’t work on his fire crew because “he
didn’t hire girls.” Those comments didn’t stop me from working six additional
summers, though.
While working on my memoir, Summers
of Fire, and later the prequel, Uprooted, I decided to take a look
at women in the 1970s. It’s not as though I lived under a rock back then. I do
remember proudly subscribing to New Woman magazine because I considered
myself a new woman not only because I took on a man’s job, but also because I
didn’t see any rush to get married and have kids. The editor invited readers to
send in a response to the question: “How did you meet your “new” man?”
They would publish replies in a later issue. Because I was dating the man I met
on my first fire, of course I sent one in. What a thrill to see it in print a
few months later. I also remember following abortion rights in women’s
magazines, but not diligently.
Some of what I found I already
knew, but there were plenty of history making landmarks that I had no idea had been
so recent.
Before 1978, employers could legally
refuse to hire a pregnant woman. If she wasn’t and later got pregnant, she
could have been fired. Even worse, if a woman was simply of child-bearing age
when she applied for a job, employers worried about the “risk” that she could
get pregnant, and often would not hire her “just in case.”
An unmarried woman could not
obtain contraceptives until 1972—despite the fact that “the pill” became
available years earlier. Married women had access to this form of contraception,
but it was frowned upon unless their menstrual periods were “unusually
difficult.” I could find no references as to what constituted unusually
difficult periods and who made that decision. No doubt her male physician.
The first state to allow abortion
was New York State in 1970, with remaining states not following suit until the
monumental court case Roe vs. Wade. The case led to the Supreme Court decision
that the Constitution protects a woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion
without “overly restrictive” government intervention. I won’t get into the recent
overturning of that landmark case here. While I think the overturning is
appalling and scary, I want to focus on other recently acquired rights.
Credit cards. Did you know that
before 1970 a single woman could not obtain a credit and a married woman
couldn’t have one without her husband as a cosigner?
When we think of human beings as
the property of other human beings, the first thing that comes to mind is
slavery, and rightfully so. But did you know that not that long ago, women were
considered to be her husband’s “property,” and she had to sacrifice many
personal freedoms we now take for granted? How about the right to say “no” if the
wife did not want to have sex with her husband. Unbelievably, it took until
1993 before marital rape became a criminal offense.
The Divorce Reform Act, passed in
1969, changed the end of a marriage in a significant way. Divorces could now be
based on “irreconcilable differences,” eliminating finger pointing and fault-finding
which often resulted in expensive and lengthy divorce litigation. This act initiated
the long overdue 50/50 settlement.
Another bias I’d never thought
about was jury duty. It took until 1975 for all U.S. states to allow women jurors.
Why? Because men thought that women were too frail and emotional to hear
detailed testimony surrounding violent crimes.
What about a college degree? Before
the late 1960s, if a woman wanted a degree from a prestigious college, she had
to set her sights low. No Ivy League colleges allowed women. Harvard skirted
around the problem by creating Radcliffe in 1969, but it took 11 more years for
all Ivy League colleges to allow women to enroll.
And what about workplace hassles
in the 60s and 70s? Not only did women fear losing their job simply because
they wanted children, but they either had to put up with sexual harassment or
quit. Sadly, many women could not afford to quit, or simply thought it was just
part of a normal day at the office. It wasn’t until 1977 that legal recourse
against sexual harassment at work finally became available.
As for discrimination in the hiring
process? The Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Act of 1972 expanded Title VII
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to increase protection of minorities and women in
both public and private-sector employment. At last, women could not be denied a
job just because they were female. Not that it still didn’t happen and still does
happen, I’m sad to say. It was hard to prove 40 years ago, and it still is.
And last, but not least, it took
until 2013 for women to be allowed into combat duty—a controversial decision to
this day.
It’s now 2022. What’s going on? Roe
vs. Wade has been rescinded. The wage gap between men and women is sitting at
women earning 22% less than men. This discrepancy sure isn’t because of
education. Stats show that women do better in college than men. Not only do
more women have degrees, but more women advance to obtain graduate and
doctorate degrees, and if that’s not enough, they graduate with honors.
Remember that slogan, “You’ve
come a long way, baby?” Well, apparently women came a long way, and now have
taken several huge steps backwards. What are your thoughts? Feel free to leave
a comment.
