Stories Of Women In The 1960s

In the 1960s, a woman s place was seen as being in the home. She even found it hard to make a big purchase if a man wasn t with her. African-American women faced racism daily and were given low-paid, exhausting jobs. It was time for women to stand up for equal rights and equal pay. These are the stories of four trailblazers who achieved amazing things in difficult circumstances: Betty Freidan protested at the Miss America pageant against judging women on appearance. Ella Baker helped organize Freedom Schools, where black history was taught for the first time. Barbara Castle was one of the few women members of Parliament and fought for equal pay. Mary Quant showed women they could dress for themselves and not men. Many of the rights women have today are down to their actions. They helped change society's image of women forever."

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD In 1960, Harvard’s sister college, Radcliffe, announced the founding of an Institute for Independent Study, a “messy experiment” in women’s education that offered paid fellowships to those with a PhD or “the equivalent” in artistic achievement. Five of the women who received fellowships—poets Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, painter Barbara Swan, sculptor Marianna Pineda, and writer Tillie Olsen—quickly formed deep bonds with one another that would inspire and sustain their most ambitious work. They called themselves “the Equivalents.” Drawing from notebooks, letters, recordings, journals, poetry, and prose, Maggie Doherty weaves a moving narrative of friendship and ambition, art and activism, love and heartbreak, and shows how the institute spoke to the condition of women on the cusp of liberation. “Rich and powerful. . . . A love story about art and female friendship.” —Harper’s Magazine “Reads like a novel, and an intense one at that. . . . The Equivalents is an observant, thoughtful and energetic account.” —Margaret Atwood, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

In the 1960s, a woman's place was seen as being in the home. She even found it hard to make a big purchase if a man wasn't with her. African-American women faced racism daily and were given low-paid, exhausting jobs. It was time for women to stand up for equal rights and equal pay. These are the stories of four trailblazers who achieved amazing things in difficult circumstances: Betty Freidan protested at the Miss America pageant against judging women on appearance. Ella Baker helped organize Freedom Schools, where black history was taught for the first time. Barbara Castle was one of the few women members of Parliament and fought for equal pay. Mary Quant showed women they could dress for themselves and not men. Many of the rights women have today are down to their actions. They helped change society's image of women forever.

An in depth look at the lives of women in the swinging 1960s—beyond the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. The 1960s were a progressive decade, bringing many life changing events, especially for women. Women of the 1960s explores the experiences of teenagers, young career women, and those married with young children, especially those based outside of London and far from the hedonistic influences of the day. Much of the information included in this book comes from the surprisingly honest and generous contributions of the women themselves, ensuring that a wide range of experiences are brought to life like never before. Covering topics including life after school, career choices, life after work, eating in and out, teenagers, sex, marriage, fashion, finance, women’s liberation, and travel. These stories also cover the era’s current affairs, including the Cold War and the pervasive fear of nuclear attack. Fascinating and frank, Women of the 1960s provides a new perspective on one of the most pivotal decades in modern history.

WINNER OF THE 2020 CONNECTICUT BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION AND NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS IN 2021 BY BOOKBROWSE "Perkins makes the story of these early and unwitting feminist pioneers come alive against the backdrop of the contemporaneous civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1970s, and offers observations that remain eerily relevant on U.S. campuses today."—Edward B. Fiske, bestselling author of Fiske Guide to Colleges "If Yale was going to keep its standing as one of the top two or three colleges in the nation, the availability of women was an amenity it could no longer do without." In the winter of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating "one thousand male leaders" each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation's top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women's equality in education. Or was it? The experience the first undergraduate women found when they stepped onto Yale's imposing campus was not the same one their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the privileges an elite education was supposed to offer, many of the first girls found themselves immersed in an overwhelmingly male culture they were unprepared to face. Yale Needs Women is the story of how these young women fought against the backward-leaning traditions of a centuries-old institution and created the opportunities that would carry them into the future. Anne Gardiner Perkins's unflinching account of a group of young women striving for change is an inspiring story of strength, resilience, and courage that continues to resonate today.

When Betty Friedan produced The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she could not have realized how the discovery and debate of her contemporaries' general malaise would shake up society. Victims of a false belief system, these women were following strict social convention by loyally conforming to the pretty image of the magazines, and found themselves forced to seek meaning in their lives only through a family and a home. Friedan's controversial book about these women - and every woman - would ultimately set Second Wave feminism in motion and begin the battle for equality. This groundbreaking and life-changing work remains just as powerful, important and true as it was forty-five years ago, and is essential reading both as a historical document and as a study of women living in a man's world. 'One of the most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century.' New York Times 'Feminism ...... began with the work of a single person: Friedan.' Nicholas Lemann With a new Introduction by Lionel Shriver

The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

In 1963, Betty Friedan unleashed a storm of controversy with her bestselling book, The Feminine Mystique. Hundreds of women wrote to her to say that the book had transformed, even saved, their lives. Nearly half a century later, many women still recall where they were when they first read it. In A Strange Stirring, historian Stephanie Coontz examines the dawn of the 1960s, when the sexual revolution had barely begun, newspapers advertised for "perky, attractive gal typists," but married women were told to stay home, and husbands controlled almost every aspect of family life. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, and challenging both conservative and liberal myths about Friedan, A Strange Stirring brilliantly illuminates how a generation of women came to realize that their dissatisfaction with domestic life didn't't reflect their personal weakness but rather a social and political injustice.