Women’s Liberation Movements of the 1960’s Essay Example for Free

Women’s Liberation Movements of the 1960’s Essay I guess if I had to choose a specific event it would be the women’s liberation movement, from the beginning of the 1960’s women were portrayed as serving the men, responsible for housekeeping and day to day child rearing and finally how women were best measured by their beauty, charm, and sexual restraint and men by their accomplishments, power, and sexual prowess (Farber, D. p. 241). What kind of a life would we as women have today if we didn’t have the women who spoke up for us in the 60’s, we would be bare foot and pregant taking care of a family day to day, there’s no wonder why many women had nervous breakdowns the same thing over and over daily, that’s not for me. I thank the women who stood up and spoke up our struggle for equality which had been going on since the late 1840’s and 1960’s. If it weren’t for the Women’s Liberation Group, where would we be right now probably still doing what we were meant to do by men’s portrayal of us, at home taking care of the house- keeping, children and of course them too. We would not have voting rights, opportunities to work and be equal to what men can do, we were told that we should take our place and to â€Å"embrace our natural roles as family nurturers and housewives† (Farber, D. p. 243.) At this point, I would not have been able to continue my education, pursue a career outside the home I really feel lucky to have had the opportunity that we women have now, we are able to vote, we can speak up and say no more sexual harassment in the work place, ask for more pay be equal to a man’s salary range. Women can now become doctors, lawyers, elections, and professors we can choose our own path and have control over our minds, body and soul. If we choose to have a career or run a household then that is our choice. It took a lot of marching and protests to get to where we are right now. Even in during World War II we were able to run a house and work to provide for our family. National Organization for Women in October of 1966 about 300 women and men held the founding conference of NOW. Betty Friedan was elected president. National Organization for Women’s board of directors was narrowly drawn from the academic world the government, and other well-connected elites. With no mass movement yet to draw on, National Organization for Women’s leaders aimed to work as political insiders, lobbying the executive branch to fully implement existing statures which outlawed sex discrimination. But NOW was not formulated to be just another inside-the Washington- beltway lobbying group. While their immediate aims were simply to force full compliance with the law, their larger goals were, in the context of the mid-1960’s a powerful challenge to the status quo: We reject the current assumpti ons that a man must carry the sole burden of supporting himself, his wife and family†¦or that marriage, home and family are primarily a woman’s world and responsibility-hers to dominate-his to support. We believe that true partnership between sexes demands a different concept of marriage, an equitable sharing of the responsibilities of home and of the economic burdens of their support. While women were trying to figure out why they felt â€Å"trapped† many middle class women especially the well-educated, were not satisfied with their lives, many sought help from therapist seeking solutions to their discontent. Many women had been dosed with tranquilizers some got better and learned to accept their prescribed gender roles many continued discontent and continued to search for answers. By the end of the decade many women would turn to the women’s movement for that answer. The Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) was born in the US among students radicalized by the mass black civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. In Britain the WLM developed from the struggles of women workers for equal pay. The two movements had different characteristics but both w ere rooted in the effect of the long post war economic boom. This had pulled increasing numbers of women into the workforce and into further education. For example between 1960 and 1965 there was a 57 percent increase in women being awarded degrees in the US (the same figure for men rose by 25 percent). Suddenly a whole generation of women had new expectations. The universities of the US became centers’ of struggle and debate. By 1967 thousands of women had been on marches and protests. They had fought for black civil rights, opposed the war in Vietnam and challenged the state. Yet they faced sexism in their own political organizations and felt sidelined and trivialized by the mainly male leadership. It seems shocking that such brilliant radical movements did not take women’s rights seriously. But when the movements exploded in the 1960s they did so in a vacuum. The socialist tradition had been decimated by the witch-hunts of McCarthyism. There was no Labor type party or revolutionary left to speak of. The shadow cast by the experience of Stalinism made many feel that socialism had nothing to do with liberation. Women activists began to organize their own workshops, write papers and talk about their oppression. The movement in the US was dominated by the idea that women had to organize separately. Meetings often involved women talking about their personal lives – a process described as â€Å"consciousness rising†. Yet the world had changed. For the first time women could control their fertility. Millions of women were gaining a level of economic independence that gave them new choices. Imagine the life of a woman before the 1960s. Her life had been difficult– denied basic rights, trapped in the home her entire life and discriminated against in the workplace. Then, the 1960s came along with it, the thought that women could have a say in their government, that they could perhaps leave the home without feeling guilty about leaving their children alone, and that they could receive a job and earn wages like men. The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s helped all these changes to come about through its scores of policies and radical ways of thinking. In fact, to illustrate some of these radical ways of thinking, some extremist women made a â€Å"Freedom Trash Can† and filled it with representations of women trapped in the home. They threw objects like heels, bras, girdles, hair curlers, and magazines like Cosmo, Playboy and Ladies’ Home Journal in it. The women who put the Trash Can together planned to set it on fire, but decided not to do so because burning of the contents prohibited a city law (Echols 150). Nevertheless, given the numerous obstacles put in place to stop women from changing their status in society, the women’s movement of the 1960s made significant changes for women in regards to basic rights, in the home and in the workplace for the better. Since denied basic rights in most aspects of society, from political rights to reproductive rights, women in the United States fought vigorously for equality. For example, women fought for their rights not to symbolize â€Å"beauty objects† or â€Å"sex objects.† In 1968, 100 women protested the Miss America Beauty Pageant because it promoted â€Å"physical attractiveness and charm as the primary measures of a woman’s worth,† especially the swimsuit portion of the contest (Echols 149). Also, according to Estelle Carol, the founder of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, women began to get over this idea in the 1960s, but many women still felt Overly obsessed with [their] body shapes and were often prisoners of the fantasies [they] got from TV and magazine advertising. But [they] were learning to question these things and even some of the so-called ‘supermodels’ spoke out bravely about the need to get past this ridiculous ‘beautyà ¢â‚¬â„¢ thing. (Interview). Again, thanks to the women activist, we would not be sitting here today if we as women didn’t stand together and fight for our rights. I would not be taking my classes on-line have the job that I have now I was very young when I got married back then that’s how we were raised at least by my families morals, I didn’t graduate even though my expectations of myself was to graduate go to college and become an attorney instead I started to raise a family and had a husband who basically was raised to be the dominate person in the relationship. I did work outside the home and enjoyed working I became this woman that wanted more out of life and started looking at how a lot of famous women became leaders so I decided to be more aggressive and stood up for myself, at the age of 25 I became a Collections Manager for an attorney who worked on collecting bad debt for a Medical Hospital, it was a great opportunity for me. I don’t think that I would have had that opportunity if the women’s liberation movement would not have had existed how many women would be lost in translation not knowing where to go for help or how it would be for us in today’s society, where would we be at right now? Would we be able to make decisions that affect our own lives and our families or would we still be depending on our partners to make all of the decisions for the family. We are very lucky to have what we have now, freedom to express, freedom to vote, freedom to work and most of all make our own decisions whether to have or not to have children, and get married if we want. References Farber, D. R., Foner, E. (1994). The age of great dreams, America in the 1960s. (First edition). New York: Hill Wang Retrieved March 6, 2012. http://womensphere.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-rising-womens-liberation-movement-in-the-radical-1960s/ Retrieved March 6, 2012 http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/_notes/GrrlSmarts/sawhney.html Retrieved March 6, 2012