aamusedinatx | Remembrance of Things Past: Friedan and King: Super Models

An interesting editorial in "In These Times" has this to say about the recent passings of Betty Friedan and Coretta Scott King:

So let’s remember what economic, political and social life was like for women in 1964. Want ads in the newspapers were segregated by gender, meaning that women simply could not apply for some jobs. Discrimination and admissions quotas to graduate and professional schools meant that women could be nurses but not doctors, teachers but not professors, secretaries but not managers or executives, paralegals but not lawyers. It was worse for African American and Latina women, who were consigned primarily to domestic and agricultural work. High school and college sports were for boys, not girls. Women could not get credit cards or mortgages in their own names, and when a couple applied for a mortgage the wife’s salary was not counted because it was “pin money.” Abortion was illegal, there were no sexual harassment laws, no battered women’s shelters and a woman had to have two eyewitnesses to get a rape conviction. There was no pregnancy leave, and once a married working woman got pregnant, she also got fired.

Full article found here.