My post was a response to a poster who said women were “barred by gender” from the potential workforce. I said nothing about equality. Just because banning was not banned, does not mean all were banned.
In 1956, I went to the infirmary and was treated by a woman doctor. I had female classmates studying engineering. And studied mathematics and chemistry under female professors. Tell me again about 1955.
So if women weren’t completely barred, everything was fine!
My mother got a degree in Mathematics, graduating in 1960. She eventually became a CPA. And she still had to struggle to find work, got paid significantly less than her male peers, and generally had to deal with an uphill climb against an avalanche of bullshit compared to her male colleagues. But at least she wasn’t barred.
And then there’s Peggy Seeger’s view.
Others have answered more broadly, but let me cover the example best known to me, my mother:
That’s a stellar arc for a hard-working farm girl of the era, with two major career changes and probably never breaking $10k in annual income until her teaching years.
(My dad was Air Force civilian logistics, eventually rising to GS-10 or -11, I think, before early retirement. They were divorced five years before her change to teaching.)
So while women could go into the labor force, their opportunities, security and overall treatment pretty much often sucked, even for the brightest and most dedicated.
Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we ask actual women how they thought the job market for women stood in 1955. Or 1965. Or 1975. I wonder if their worldview might be different than jtur’s.
Who do you think was filling the secretarial/typing/steno pools in major corporations and government bureaus in the '50s? Or working the sales floors of department stores? Not that the pay was any better than your examples, and these workers were often referred to as “office girls” or “shop girls”, but single women were working in offices and shops from the 1890s onwards.
You’re right, I overlooked that sector, between the low end of labor and the few “professions” where women were prevalent.
And African Americans in Missouri had almost full employment until the end of the Civil War.
Job and career options and growth were a very real issue for women and not any form of model to idolize as a golden era of American greatness.
Yes, I realize that. It would be nice if you didn’t comment on what you think I wrote but what I actually wrote, various caveats included.
Before a Mod jumps on me for a comment that should be in Great Debates, the following is a personal observation (rather than political statement):
I honestly thought the above quote from Broomstick (crystallized from a lot of other posts here) was the underlying point of Donald Trump’s campaign – with or without the explicit support of the Republican party. I thought his underlying message (and the sympathies it generated) was part of a big backlash against that black guy being in charge and the political, social, economic, (and whatever else is left) advantage of the straight WASP* man which seemed to get whittled away over and over and over during those years.
It really seemed to me that the non-coastal states really rallied behind the ‘return to a traditional America’ theme# this time around. And this in spite of the technological advances that are so ubiquitous from coast to coast that nobody even thinks of them any more. The key is (was) that the technological advances and social progress they facilitated are not what the Bible Belt and Old Timers disliked. What Traditionalists dislike is their dwindling dominance and the erosion of commensurate advantages.
Not long ago, I stumbled upon a YouTube video in which the presenter provided a bunch of Reasons Heavy Metal (music) is a Conservative (rather than Liberal/Youth-oriented) Genre. One of the arguments was that the lyrics of the genre are often about dominance and maintaining hierarchical structures, with the presenter noting that Republicans and other conservatives are very big on hierarchies and maintaining the ‘proper’ order of things. Ah! That made sense to me: If you believe you’re in the higher layers of the pyramid*, you’re going to want to maintain the current social/political/economic hierarchy. If you’re someone in power, there’s nothing wrong with using any means, including force (sometimes even illegitimate and/or excessive force) to make sure your power is both respected and maintained. In contrast, if you’re lower down in the pyramid, it’s not so appealing to maintain the status quo in which you are getting the crappy end of every deal and watching others enjoy greater benefits and perks. Such a situation makes you want to take a harder look at social and political rules and try to bring about changes.
And that’s what the last eight years were. *That black guy *got into office promising hope and change, and he certainly delivered a lot of changes (and, in my opinion, Hope as well). But the backlash was already starting before he took office, with bumper stickers quite prevalent here (in the city of The Gipper’s presidential memorial and library) which said, “Hope is fine, but you can keep the change.” and that kind of backlash started when Elder Bush left office. The current Chief of Staff merely found the right way to tap into the sentiment and become its figurehead.
This is more relevant than you think. A couple decades ago, my demographics professor pointed out that a population that is growing (lots of Mom + Dad + 4 or 5 kids) is good for an economy but tough on a family’s budget, and the reverse is also true. While the average family size is shrinking (0 or 1 kid) and the family is able to do well compared to the Joneses, the fact that the next generation is smaller than the current one means there will be fewer consumers whose purchases are supporting the workers who are older than them, and there will also be fewer wage-earners whose Social Security deductions are available to sustain the existing retirees.
It’s ironic that 1955 is the idealized year. Sure, that was after WWII and many of its aftermaths had faded quite a bit while involvement in Korea hadn’t yet happened. But it was also the era of heavy government, with decentralization of industries (particularly those with any military involvement) practically mandated by the government and the national highway system being built on government dollars to facilitate the resulting transportation needs. I thought Republicans hated big government (?) It was also the era of McCarthyist Red Scares and atomic bomb drills. Do we really want to go back to that stuff?
–G!
#the same theme that failed for the Dole campaign when Bill Clinton’s team leveraged a poorly chosen phrase to their advantage.
*the pyramid in the USA is dominated by rich, white, male, Protestant, Christian, capitalists of Western European ancestry. The more of those categories you can fit into, the higher up you are in the layers.
Nitpick: the Korean War was over by 1955 - it ran from 1950-1953.
Double nitpick, the armistice was signed in 1953, but no peace treaty. The war is still ongoing.
Just to add one more point to what’s already been said about the 50s being a unique postwar era, I remember reading magazine articles from the era in which it was clear that consumption, in and of itself, was being used as a key measure of progress. Magazines like LIFE would go on about how each individual American on average was now consuming a record “x” kilowatt-hours of electricity or “y” tons of steel as if the consumption itself was an accomplishment. The word “sustainability” didn’t even exist in the present environmental context, and seemingly no one gave any thought to the emerging stress between population growth and the finite resources of the planet. As far as industrial growth was concerned, it was pretty much a free-for-all. Many consider Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to mark the beginning of the modern sense of environmental consciousness, and that wasn’t published until 1962.
And then there was the Cold War, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, and the social issues already mentioned. Opportunities for women were limited, and progress was still touted in terms of what “men” had done and would do. And it was not a good time to be gay, or to be black – a very good film on both those subjects is Far From Heaven, whose title is a perfect synopsis for what the 50s were to many people. Among its notable features is beautiful cinematography that makes creative use of vivid colors. The opening scenes look positively idyllic, but as the story unfolds we find that much is wrong under the surface of the picture-perfect 50s.
The major arguments around lowering the maximum marginal tax rate aren’t about federal tax receipts, it’s the recognition that this coincided with major upsurges in top executive compensation and with the growing wealth and income disparity in the US.
If you’re getting that picky, we could start on the whole “police action” thing…
A romantic longing for a past golden age which was destroyed by spiritual and moral decay seems to be a reoccurring cultural trope across human civilizations, appearing everywhere from ancient religious traditions, the rhetoric of authoritarian ideologies, and even modern fantasy fiction world building. Another reoccurring trope is that the next generation is ignorant, lazy, disrespectful of their elders, and perverted.
The '50s are praised not just by conservatives but liberals as well, since that was a time for an increase in wealth across class lines, compared to the later decades up to the modern day where most wealth accrues at the top, despite the increasing productivity of the workforce.