Women's and Gender Studies 200 students Maeve Devlin and Alexandria Spakes reflect on the lives of women in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Throughout the week I have read and understood what it really was like for women back in the “glory days” of the 1970’s and 80’s. I always associated the latter half of the 1900’s to be a time in which society improved and life was easy, although all I really have seen about this era is through movies like Grease and Sixteen Candles. However, it is not only me glorifying the 70’s and 80’s, if you ask anyone what era they would live in or go back to, I bet a good majority would say that “The 80’s was where it was at”, but was it really? From my reading and discussions, I can safely assume that the 70’s and 80’s were actually not where “it was at”, not for women anyway.
A fantastic article called “A Day Without Feminism” written by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards really brought forward the trials and tribulations women had to face on a daily basis in 1970, the start of a decade that would change women and their rights for forever. In this article it gave facts like if a girl in high school “got herself pregnant”, as if it doesn’t take two, she would get kicked out of the National Honor Society and expelled from school. The rule about getting kicked out of the National Honor Society was only changed within the turn of the century.
In this era women were contradictory beings, in many professions deemed appropriate for women sex appeal was a requirement, however if they got pregnant or even married they would be fired or demoted. For example, if a female teacher was pregnant she would be fired due to the notion that “children were not to know that women had sex”. Yet, they were the objects of sexual allure and appeal. A man in power at the woman’s place of work could demand a blowjob and call her pet names and the woman would either have to quit or comply to their sexual demands, because back then sexual harassment did not exist.
Much like in the introduction of the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Sandra explicitly says that she listens to the men in authority because they are like her father, men who believe that she should stay at home and wait to be married than to go on and further her career. Her father always asked her “Why are you doing this?” after all, he did work hard to give her a house with a proper heating system to live in until another man claimed her. Even in the 1980’s after the feminists protests that made the news and are now in history books, women are still treated as property, like Edna Pontellier from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the human woman is nothing more than a piece of property to a man, and not even his most valuable one. The introduction of this novel makes one thing clear, women like Sandra’s mother lived in regret and in the shadows of their husbands. Many women are like Sandra’s mother and never finished high school because they often had a man to provide for them and school for women was seen as a past time until they were passed from father to husband.
Although the 1970’s and 80’s produced fantastic films, music, and art that has shaped our culture, people seem to forget what really happened back then, what the life was really like. Life in the 1980’s was nothing like Risky Business or Animal House for women in this decade. To spend a day in the life of the women that helped uplift and support women in my generation and generations to come would be hard and far different than we think. For that we have a lot to thank them for.
- by Maeve Devlin. This post originally appeared on Medium.
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Growing up, I always told my family that I should have been born in a different year, and I don’t think I realized how different I would have it had I been born in the 1970’s or 1980’s. We see how fun their clothes were, how big their hair was, and how bright their makeup was, and that is why we want to live in that decade, we don’t pay as much attention to what … it was like for women living in the 1970’s.
A Day without Feminism written by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards taught me about what it was like being a woman in the workforce during the 1970’s. Having want ads segregated into “Help Wanted Male” and “Help Wanted Female” being a female and having a job such as a lawyer, females would have to look under “Help Wanted Male.”
Also, if a boss demanded sex, refers to his female employee exclusively as “baby”, or says he won’t pay her unless she gives him a blowjob, she either has to quit or succumb.
There was no such thing as sexual harassment back then, and I hear a lot of females who say “nothing like that would ever happen to me” or “I would not let someone do or talk like that to me.” I had that mindset growing up, “nothing bad will happen to me” although I never had my bosses act sexual towards me, I have had a coworker who could have been around my parents age (45–50), he would tell me that I was “sexy” and how “if he was my boyfriend, he would do this and that” and would write his number down and tell me “not to tell anyone about it.” I felt uncomfortable, when I told someone what happened I got “You probably started it by flirting with him.” I can’t even imagine having to do something with someone because I am a female and that’s what has to be done in order to keep my job or to be paid.
I find it fascinating that depending on how you were raised and the generation you were raised in changes how things are looked at. In The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros’ father wanted her to live at home until she was married. In my family, my parents were always telling me, “You will be moved out when you are eighteen.” Her father wonders “why he worked so hard to buy a house with a furnace so she could go back and live like that.” He wants her to be on television as a weather girl or to marry and have babies.
I also think that some people do not understand how hard women fought for us to be able to have the rights that we have today, some women are afraid to not do what their husbands tell them to do, like Sandra’s mother. Her mother told her “good lucky you went to school” she is proud that her daughter is doing what she wants to do.
- by Alexandria Spakes. A longer version of this post originally appeared on Medium.
