I think it really depends how you count. Gender essentialism has gotten worse for little kids since the 1960s and 1970s, if you look at pinkified toys, clothes, and play expectations. (Though we ought to remember that the great egalitarian bits we're looking at were pushing back at a more sexist culture. Have you heard "William's Got A Doll," from "Free to be You and Me?")
But in 1970, teenaged girls had much more limited opportunities to play team sports, to study for a rewarding career, and to be safe from sexual assault. (I'm not interested in sports, myself, but a lot of boys who played school sports turned out to better at teamwork and competition...and girls were largely excluded from that until after 1972.) And parents and teachers thought it was a waste of time for a girl to study engineering (even if she dreamed of spaceships), because "she'd just get married."
And of course 1972 was before anybody had heard of "date rape." I was in high school in the early 1980s, and I remember when people were just starting to talk about it as a new concept and really having trouble with the idea*. "What do you mean, he raped her? That's ridiculous! She went out with him...sure, he treated her very badly, but these things happen sometimes. Rape isn't anything like that." These days, date rape isn't prosecuted enough. But it's real progress that people recognize it exists. (I would call it feminist progress, though I know it sometimes happens to men.)
These days, women are still underpaid, on average...but not nearly as badly as they were 40 years ago. And their employers try hard to SAY they treat their female employees fairly in hiring and pay (many states have laws about it, though the laws may not be enforced well.) In 1970, newspaper classified ads had sections for "jobs for men" and "jobs for women." Even where they overlapped (like "male elementary school teacher" and "female elementary school teacher,") they were paid differently, openly, as if employers had nothing to be ashamed of.
*Like, more recently, people having trouble with the idea of "white privilege," or any kind of privilege other than economic or formal legal privileges. It can exist for a long time, but something happens when people start naming it and trying to do something about it. Takes a very long time to fix, of course.
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Date: 2014-11-24 03:01 pm (UTC)But in 1970, teenaged girls had much more limited opportunities to play team sports, to study for a rewarding career, and to be safe from sexual assault. (I'm not interested in sports, myself, but a lot of boys who played school sports turned out to better at teamwork and competition...and girls were largely excluded from that until after 1972.) And parents and teachers thought it was a waste of time for a girl to study engineering (even if she dreamed of spaceships), because "she'd just get married."
And of course 1972 was before anybody had heard of "date rape." I was in high school in the early 1980s, and I remember when people were just starting to talk about it as a new concept and really having trouble with the idea*. "What do you mean, he raped her? That's ridiculous! She went out with him...sure, he treated her very badly, but these things happen sometimes. Rape isn't anything like that." These days, date rape isn't prosecuted enough. But it's real progress that people recognize it exists. (I would call it feminist progress, though I know it sometimes happens to men.)
These days, women are still underpaid, on average...but not nearly as badly as they were 40 years ago. And their employers try hard to SAY they treat their female employees fairly in hiring and pay (many states have laws about it, though the laws may not be enforced well.) In 1970, newspaper classified ads had sections for "jobs for men" and "jobs for women." Even where they overlapped (like "male elementary school teacher" and "female elementary school teacher,") they were paid differently, openly, as if employers had nothing to be ashamed of.
*Like, more recently, people having trouble with the idea of "white privilege," or any kind of privilege other than economic or formal legal privileges. It can exist for a long time, but something happens when people start naming it and trying to do something about it. Takes a very long time to fix, of course.
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