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The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey

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A period that evokes happy homemakers and suburban subdivisions with manicured green lawns, the 1950s was, in fact, a tumultuous era for women. Powerful post-World War II propaganda, such as persuasive advertising campaigns, encouraged women to seek husbands, settle down and have babies. Despite strong efforts to keep women in the home, however, the 1950s was a time when a small number of women began to seek higher education and women's rights groups sought equal rights for working women.

Family Life

Media representations of family life in the 1950s almost always included a woman -- a mother and wife -- at the center. Informed by such television shows as "I Love Lucy" and "Leave it to Beaver," the 1950s was a time when women were expected to spend their lives raising a family. And for 1950s women this was more than an expectation, it was often a reality. Following the end of World War II, women left the workforce that the war had opened to them -- a workforce again dominated by the men who had returned from war -- and returned to the home, where their responsibilities were largely domestic.

Education

During the 1950s, women who enrolled in higher education often did so in order to improve their domestic skills and to find husbands -- "seeking an M.R.S. degree" was the popular expression. What is less known about women's education in the 1950s is that female scholars began to emerge, slowly and under immense discrimination, to claim their place as college professors and college department chairpersons. Still, according to the New York Times, many women who became academics during the 1950s began their college careers for the same reason other women did -- to get married.

Women in the Workplace

Though domesticity seemed to be the most suitable situation for 1950s women, during the decade women began returning to work, filling jobs traditionally considered appropriate for females. The majority of employed women were single and did jobs such as nursing, teaching and typing. In 1950, 29 percent of the American workforce was female, and that share increased through the decade. Half the female workforce was over 35 years old, but 40 percent of married women with small children also held a job. A shortage of employees for women's jobs in the early 1950s prompted the government to create programs to train women to fill these positions.

Feminism

With women returning to the workforce after being ousted at the end of World War II, and some women looking for academic opportunities that had little or nothing to do with finding a husband, the 1950s saw the rise of feminist efforts to aid women find equal footing. Women's rights organizations began seeking equal pay for women, and women's magazines such as the Ladies' Home Journal and the Women's Home Companion encouraged women to take part in politics and political action. Although feminism in the 50s was shaped by Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 analysis "The Second Sex," it was not until the early 1960s that women such as Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique," began to draw attention to the dissatisfactions of domesticity.

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A period that evokes happy homemakers and suburban subdivisions with manicured green lawns, the 1950s was, in fact, a tumultuous era for women. Powerful post-World War II propaganda, such as persuasive advertising campaigns, encouraged women to seek husbands, settle down and have babies.

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Though the 1950s was in many ways a period of conformity with traditional gender roles, it was also a decade of change, when discontent with the status quo was emerging.

Popular culture and the mass media reinforced messages about traditional gender roles, consumer culture, and the Cold War ideal of domesticity, but the reality of women's lives did not always reflect these ideals.

African American women faced particular difficulties in the pursuit of postwar material abundance and the "American dream." Popular portrayals of ideal femininity and home life ignored the lives of minority women and families.

Conformity and the 1950s

The 1950s is often viewed as a period of conformity, when both men and women observed strict gender roles and complied with society's expectations. After the devastation of the Great Depression and World War II, many Americans sought to build a peaceful and prosperous society. However, even though certain gender roles and norms were socially enforced, the 1950s was not as conformist as is sometimes portrayed, and discontent with the status quo bubbled just beneath the surface of the placid peacetime society. Although women were expected to identify primarily as wives and mothers and to eschew work outside of the home, women continued to make up a significant proportion of the postwar labor force. Moreover, the 1950s witnessed significant changes in patterns of sexual behavior, which would ultimately lead to the " sexual revolution " of the 1960s.

Changing social trends following World War II

Demobilization at the end of World War II brought a great many changes. Millions of women who had joined the workforce during the war were displaced by returning soldiers. Messages in popular culture and the mass media encouraged these women to give up their jobs and return quietly to domestic life. Most women, however, wished to keep their jobs, and thus women made up approximately one-third of the peacetime labor force.

During the 1950s, marriage and homeownership rates skyrocketed, so there is no doubt that many Americans were content to pursue the "American dream." These trends were aided by suburbanization and the mass production of automobiles. Cars allowed Americans who lived in the suburbs to commute easily into urban areas for work. Cars not only changed work and housing patterns, but also facilitated the rise of new sexual norms. They provided young couples with a place to spend time together alone, away from the prying eyes of parents and other members of the community. This, in turn, led to a rise in premarital sex and birth rates. Thus, patterns of sexual behavior were changing even as the traditional ideal continued to insist upon marriage before sex.

Between 1946 and 1964, the largest generation of Americans, known as the baby boomers, was born. This demographic trend in turn reinforced women's identities as wives and mothers. Despite societal norms that encouraged women to stay in the home and out of the workplace, approximately forty percent of women with young children, and at least half of women with older children, chose to remain in the work force.

Cold War domesticity and popular culture

Gender roles in the 1950s were intimately connected to the Cold War. The term nuclear family emerged to describe and encourage the stability of the family as the essential building block of a strong and healthy society. In this view, a woman played a crucial role in waging the Cold War, by keeping the family unit strong and intact. She could do this best, it was thought, by remaining at home to take care of her husband and children, and refusing to pursue a career. Thus was a link forged between traditional gender roles and national security.

Moreover, because the Cold War was also a competition between two very different economic systems, the virtues of capitalism were touted as proving the superiority of the United States over the Soviet Union. Capitalism revolved around the exchange of goods and services in the marketplace, and so identifying with consumer culture became a way of waging the Cold War. Women, traditionally expected to do most of the shopping for the household, were encouraged to identify as patriotic Americans by being savvy consumers.

The norms of consumer culture and domesticity were disseminated via new and popular forms of entertainment - not just the television, which became a fixture in middle-class American households during the 1950s, but also women's magazines, popular psychology, and cinema. Shows promoting the values of domesticity, like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, became especially popular. These shows portrayed the primary roles of women as wives and mothers. Lucille Ball, in I Love Lucy, inevitably met with disaster whenever she pursued job opportunities or interests that took her outside of the household. On the other hand, the fact that every episode revolved around Lucy's attempts to pursue outside interests indicated her discontent with remaining at home. Moreover, Lucille Ball, while playing the role of a hapless housewife on TV, was in reality a highly successful actress and producer, and thus challenged society's expectations of women.

African American women in the 1950s

It is important to remember that the ideal of domesticity was primarily aimed at middle-class white women. African American women, as well as women of lower socioeconomic standing, were not portrayed in popular culture as wives and mothers; in fact, these women were hardly portrayed at all. Although African Americans have been hugely influential in popular culture throughout the twentieth century, the 1950s were a very "whitewashed" decade from the standpoint of the mass media. Additionally, many African American women were forced by economic necessity to work outside of the home, and were thus excluded from the postwar ideal of domesticity.

What do you think?

Who benefited the most from the postwar surge in material abundance?

Were there signs of discontent with the status quo of the 1950s? What were they?

How did the imperatives of the Cold War shape gender roles and society's expectations of women?

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Women in the 1950s (article) | 1950s America | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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A Ladies Guide to Party Planning - Saturday Night Live

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Advertising during the 1950s often depicted women as failures in the kitchen and other house chores. For example, housewives were portrayed as being too stupid to even handle the basics of making a cup of coffee. Not only did ads depict women as being inferior to men but some of the most popular shows in the 1950s like the sitcom, I Love Lucy, were "built around the struggles of a housewife whose stupidity keeps getting her into scraps, which resulted in lectures and yes, even spankings from her husband , who basically treated her like an overgrown child" as mentioned by Amanda Marcotte in the article, Housewives didn't

Gender roles of the 1950s played a huge role in I Love Lucy as the main character, Lucy Ricardo, a typical 1950s housewife, who cooks, cleans, and takes care of her child. Lucy is also financially dependent of her husband. However, Lucy also has ambitions for fame and living a glamorous life in which leads her to seek ways where she could earn some money, but unfortunately fails every time she tries because she is portrayed as incompetent and inferior to men. Therefore, I Love Lucy intends to show the housewives viewers at home that they are better off not pursuing any hidden dreams or ambitions in which would lure them away from their traditional societal roles as housewives.

Below I have attached a video I found on YouTube portraying the societal norms in the 1950s from I love Lucy.

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Advertising during the 1950s often depicted women as failures in the kitchen and other house chores. For example, housewives were portrayed as being too stupid to even handle the basics of making a cup of coffee.

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The creators of the television series, Mad Men, did a great job in portraying the frustrations and unhappiness of upper middle class housewives in the 1950s when they created the character, Betty Draper. Even though, many television critics dislike Betty draper because they claim that her character is narcissistic and selfish, I sympathized with Betty Draper because she is trapped in the role of being a housewife. Like many white upper middle class housewives Betty received a college education before marriage and she was unable to pursue a career after college because immediately she married and had children. It is evident that Betty felt trapped in her role as a housewife because she struggled with depression. Betty also did not seem suited to being a parent because she was often very cold to her children. Betty's marriage was also dysfunctional because her husband, Don Draper, was constantly cheating on her with other women, which was easily facilitated for him to do because he worked in the city while Betty was stuck at home in the suburbs.

It was also evident that Betty longed for a life outside her home because when she was offered a modeling job by one of her husband's potential clients she showed great happiness, but as soon as she did not get the job her unhappiness and frustrations returned as she realized that she was not going to be anything else but a housewife. The writers of mad men also did a great job in portraying Betty's frustration with her confined life as a housewife when Betty's husband calls her by the nickname "Birdy". The nickname "Birdy" is symbolic of her entrapment because many house birds live in cages. For example, when Betty's hopes of modeling are destroyed she returns to her daily housewife routine, but her frustration and dissatisfaction with her life leads her to shoot some flying pigeons outside her home.

Below I have attached a video of the scene where Betty shoots some pigeons.

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The creators of the television series, Mad Men, did a great job in portraying the frustrations and unhappiness of upper middle class housewives in the 1950s when they created the character, Betty Draper. Even though, many television critics dislike Betty draper because they claim that her character is narcissistic and selfish, I sympathized with Betty Draper because she is trapped in the role of being a housewife.

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In the 1950s education played a huge role in gender construction, as the ratio of men to women going to college was 9:1. The number of women attending college was low because many women married soon after high school and for those who did pursue a college education eventually dropped out because they got married and even after they graduated from college many women did not obtain jobs because they planned to live as housewives.Many women attended colleges near men colleges where their main goal was to marry one of these men before they graduated.
Female students would take special courses that prepared them for home life such as cooking class, interior decoration and family finance. Many 1950s women looked at college as a good place to find a spouse.

Many women did not make it to college because in high school they were taking many home education courses in which would prepare them to be good housewives. For example, if you click on this link: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/goodwife.asp you will find a list of ten steps on how to be a good wife found in a 1950s high school textbook. Basically, women were to taught to attend their husbands every need and facilitate their husbands lives in every way possible such as minimizing the noise in the house while he is at home and having dinner prepared before he arrives from work. Therefore, women were expected and encouraged before they even considered attending college to become housewives.

The film, teach conservative 1950 Wellesley students to question their traditional societal roles. The film does this by depicting examples of how an educational institution like Wellesley allowed married students to take days off schools so they could attend their marital duties at home and how many students were expected to be married before and after graduation. Many of the women in this film married men who attended neighboring colleges and took many home education courses where they were taught how to be good housewives.Above I have attached a video from the film,
Mona Lisa smile, accurately portrays the roles that college educated women were expected to fill in the 1950s. The film takes place in one of the most prestigious women's college, Wellesley, where a feminist-liberal professor attempts to Mona Lisa Smile, portraying the societal roles that college students from Wellesley were expected to fill.

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In the 1950s education played a huge role in gender construction, as the ratio of men to women going to college was 9:1.

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Many of these ads would also belittle women as they often depicted women as being submissive and unable to think without the help of their husbands. Therefore, emphasizing that women were unable to work and that their only role in society was to be serve their husbands and children at home.

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The media during the 1950s helped shape gender roles for both men and women. For example, many Americans during this time were tuned into their television sets watching the family sitcom, Leave it to Beaver, where June Cleaver was portrayed as the archetype of what the 1950's housewife is supposed to look like and act like, setting up the standards for the many housewives watching at home. These standards were set high as June was dress ed up everyday and appeared flawless while doing her house chores. June was also an active socialite in her community who hosted parties for her friends. June was also a college graduate, but instead of pursuing a career she was a housewife. Despite having a college education, June rarely had an opinion of her own and was obedient to the demands of her

Leave it to Beaver stressed the fact that women belonged in the kitchen and inside the home doing the cleaning and cooking. For example, in the video that I have attached below June's husband, Ward, lectures his son on what the roles of men and women were suppose to be like as he emphasized that "a woman's place is in the home." Not only was Ward implying that a woman's role in the home was to do all the cooking and housework but he also implied that women were incapable of cooking without the facilitation of cooking devices. Therefore, women were portrayed as being inferior to men and unable to do any work outside the home.

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June Cleaver the archetype of the 1950s housewife

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The media during the 1950s helped shape gender roles for both men and women. For example, many Americans during this time were tuned into their television sets watching the family sitcom, Leave it to Beaver, where June Cleaver was portrayed as the archetype of what the 1950's housewife is supposed to look like and act like, setting up the standards for the many housewives watching at home.

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The beave - Men cook outdoors, women stay indoors