I just finished taking a history class and I figured out that I'm really passionate about women's' rights and the women's movement. 1960 was only 58 years ago but yet it still relates to today. Women today are still discriminated against. It's crazy to know about all the things that women could and could not do. Here's a couple of the major things I learned about that women could NOT do:
1. Open a bank account, credit cards, loans or mortgages in their name
At least not without their husband or a male relative's permission until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974
2. Serve Jury Duty
Slowly, states separately allowed women to sit in the jury box over the years until Mississippi finally became the last state to legalize it in 1968.
3. Practice law
Even if they had gone through all the years of school and passed every test, women could still be denied the right to plead a client's case until 1971.
4. Attend a military academy
I guess this isn't much of a surprise, but West Point didn't admit women until 1976.
5. Take birth control pills
They were available in the 60s but several states continued to ban them. If you happened to live in a state that didn't ban them, you had to have your husband's signature before the doctor prescribed it to you.
6. Attend an Ivy League University
Yale and Princeton got on board in 1969 but Harvard held out until 1977.
7. Take time off to have a baby
If a woman happened to have a job, she would lose it if she wanted to take any maternity leave before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
8. Become a Supreme Court Justice
There wasn't a law stopping women from serving on the Supreme Court, but no women were ever appointed until Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981. As of 2018, there are three women out of nine SCOTUS judges.
9. Get a job without being rejected simply for being female.
Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was perfectly legal to discriminate against someone based on race, sex, religion and national origin.
10. Adopt a baby as a single woman
This was possible in some states but other states banned it from happening. This gradually changes in the 1960s when adoption agencies start recruiting single women for potential adopters.
11. Become presidential nominee for a major political party
Hillary Clinton was the first woman to ever receive a major political party nomination in 2016. Did you know that Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl too? She supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 but didn't vote for a candidate who vowed to "re-segregate" America. The Goldwater Girls were conservative women and political activists. They were moral mothers and wanted to redefine strict gender roles.
12. Experience equality in the workplace
Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women produced a report in 1963 that revealed, among other things, that women earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned and were kept out of the more lucrative professional positions. The National Organization of Women was founded to enforce full equality for women in truly equal partnership with men. The gender pay gap is real, even in 2018. Men still get paid more than women do and women are just as qualified.
