[Accygirl]

It's a metaphor for a society as a whole that was very repressive toward women (i.e. the steretypical T.V. housewife in heels cooking her husband dinner). The only thing that a middle-class women during the 1950s could do was cook and clean for her husband and children. If she even received a college degree (very unlikely as the percentage of women who went to college remained flat while the percentage of men attending it spiked during the 50s), she couldn't get a job outside the house. There were also no laws protecting women from workplace harassment and employment discrimination, so it was legal to hire a man over an equally qualified woman just because he was a man.

[luckystarmom]

My grandmother worked when her kids were grown. She worked at a department store. That was in the 50s.

I think women did more then you think.

[Logophile]

It's a metaphor for a society as a whole that was very repressive toward women (i.e. the steretypical T.V. housewife in heels cooking her husband dinner). The only thing that a middle-class women during the 1950s could do was cook and clean for her husband and children. If she even received a college degree (very unlikely as the percentage of women who went to college remained flat while the percentage of men attending it spiked during the 50s), she couldn't get a job outside the house. There were also no laws protecting women from workplace harassment and employment discrimination, so it was legal to hire a man over an equally qualified woman just because he was a man.

I gather from your previous posts that you are too young to have experienced the 1950s firsthand. So where are you getting all of your "facts" about life during that period?

[linda_22003]

I think your view of what the 1950s was like is just as black and white as the situation comedies of that era. My mother, who got her B.A. in 1941, her M.A. in 1946 (after serving in the Red Cross during the war), and her Ph.D. in 1951, would chuckle at it if she were here to do so (if she had time, working full time from 1946-1979, with a few years off when I arrived). So would my grandmother (B.A. 1913), who also mixed career and home life pretty well.

Were things more repressive than they are now? Yep. Do people have a lot more choices now? You bet. I am not minimizing the progress that has been made, but your view of the '50s is kind of cartoonish. I'm beginning to suspect you weren't there to see it for yourself. ;)