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[ Music ]
>> [Background Music] When the United States joined the war,
the same appeal was made.
>> We must win this war,
but we can't win this war unless you women take
over the jobs that men are leaving.
English women have done it for 3 years.
American women are now doing it all over the country.
>> How do you like it?
>> I love it.
>> But the temporary nature
of it all was constantly emphasized.
>> And Lee Dunning [assumed spelling],
who now whales on landing barges.
And what about after this war, Lee?
>> Well, this job belongs to some soldier,
and when he comes back, he can have it.
>> Oh, that's swell.
>> In the 1940s and 50s, in the country which took so much
in its progressiveness, there was a return to the idea
that women were there to support men.
>> Throughout the length and breadth of America in every city
and town, every day in the week is somebody's wedding day.
>> I pronounce that they are husband and wife.
>> No ceremony more deeply symbolizes every woman's hopes.
>> Women were expected to find satisfaction
at home, bringing up a family.
>> As I was growing up, I dreamed about Prince Charming.
I did meet him, and I wanted to have a home and a family
and a normal, average, ordinary life with children.
And I really didn't have tremendous expectations.
>> Films and advertisements on both sides
of the Atlantic helped reinforce the stereotype,
equating happiness with fulfillment at home.
[ Singing ]
>> Glad you dropped in.
Amazing, isn't it?
Look at that.
And she did the washing and ironing today for a family of 5,
the 4 of us and the baby upstairs.
>> On the first morning of our honeymoon,
I discovered my beautiful bride didn't know the first thing
about coffee, and I love good coffee.
Wife, I said, this is Maxwell House.
So remember, be a good little Maxwell Housewife,
and this honeymoon could last forever.
[ Singing ]
>> Carol [assumed spelling] took a general home economics course,
not one which would lead to professional employment,
but one which fitted her for that very important career
of being Mrs. Bill Johnson [assumed spelling].
>> And of course, women were less technically competent
that men.
>> Open the door.
>> Sorry, honey.
My watch stopped.
>> That's because you forgot to wind it again, Alice.
>> Even when women's energy was acknowledged,
the term was patronizing.
>> What is that whipcord resilience
that lets the weaker sex play half the night,
then bob up clear-eyed, ready for the next morning's work.
>> In fact, a third
of all American women worked outside the home,
but in the 1950s, most were still restricted to low-paying,
menial jobs with no chance
of becoming supervisors or managers.
At the Southern Bell phone company,
the management had a clear policy
on what was appropriate for women.
They could be operators, but go no higher.
Lorena Weeks worked on a switchboard in Atlanta, Georgia.
>> Telephone operators worked around the clock,
and I worked split hours so that I could be
with my children in the afternoon.
I'd go to work at 11, get off at 2 in the afternoon,
pick them up from school, feed them, and go back to work
at 7 o'clock at night.
And that was hard.
I worked 17 years before I had a half-day
for Christmas with my children.
I'd watch these men, the switchmen, in work that I felt
that I could do, and this meant so much more pay
and better hours, and it was just the type of work
that I would like to do too.
>> Whatever education women had, or whatever their interests,
the limits were the same.
Dusty Rhodes [assumed spelling] graduated from college in 1950,
but knew her childhood dream
of being a pilot would never be realized.
>> We had the National Air Races in Cleveland every year,
and so aviation was very big in my life.
And I had up till I was in high school and found
out from my father that you can't be an airline pilot,
darling.
They don't hire ladies.
It broke my heart, but so I settled
on being maybe a flight attendant, maybe a stewardess.
>> Every day I'm learning more.
It'll make me a good stewardess, a better human being,
and after a while maybe a better wife.
At least I can dream, can't I?
>> The image of a stewardess is of a young, single girl,
and the airlines wanted to perpetuate that almost
as an image that the male could get on there
and think maybe I may have a date tonight.
>> Eastern Airlines presents the losers.
>>She's awkward, not very friendly.
I'm afraid she's too young.
She's -- oh, she bites her nails.
She wears glasses.
Honey, no, the other -- oh, now -- aw, she's married.
Well, well.
>> Like everyone else, Dusty Rhodes was expected
to stop the job when she turned 32.
>> That made me angry.
It really did.
It just violated my sense of fair play,
that the pilots can be fired at age 60,
and we were fired at age 32.
I just -- something was wrong there.
>> By the 1960s, more Western women were coming
out of higher education than ever before, with new ambitions
for themselves, and as prosperity grew
and new appliances went into more homes,
some of the old drudgery was removed.
>> These labor-saving, time-saving devices
in our homes free a woman, so she --
>> As this happened,
many American women grew dissatisfied and frustrated.
They found their manifesto in a book
that became a bestseller in 1963.
In The Feminine Mystique,
New York academic Betty Friedan wrote a devastating critique
of the modern woman's situation.
Women as well as men can only find their identity in work
that uses their full capacities.
A woman cannot find her identity in the dull routine
of housework, she wrote.
If a job is to be the way out of the trap for a woman,
it must be a job that she can take seriously as part
of her life plan, work in which she can grow as part of society.
>> The majority of American women
in many agents are working outside the home.
But most of them are working at low pay,
relatively low skilled jobs, often in a dead end
for professional advancement,
and they are not really taking part
in the decision-making areas of American life
in anything except token numbers.
>> For some, like Colleen Pereau [assumed spelling],
who got married after the War, Friedan's ideas were anathema.
>> I thought, how strange.
What is wrong with this woman?
Everybody I knew was not oppressed and was very happy
and was not miserable,
and we were all enjoying raising our families.
>> But for other housewives like Jacqui Ceballos,
The Feminine Mystique was a revelation.
>> Betty Friedan was speaking to me.
I was a married woman trapped.
It just expanded my life.
The first thing I thought of was instead of blaming my husband
or myself, I realized it wasn't us.
It was the society.
[ Singing ]
>> In 1963, American society was changing fast.
The campaign for civil rights
for Black Americans was making real progress.
Women's grievances became another cause.
They called for an end to discrimination
on grounds of gender too.
The Great March in Washington that year led
to a landmark victory for all minorities, and also for women.
President Johnson's Civil Rights Act
of 1964 guaranteed equal rights for everyone.
With the passing of the act, women started to apply
for jobs they'd previously been barred from.
Telephone operator Lorena Weeks saw her chance.
>> I was very excited.
I knew this would mean
that women could have better paying jobs.
I bid on the job for switchman, and my bid was returned stating
that this was not a job being awarded to women.
>> Citing the Civil Rights Act, Weeks took her fight
to be a telephone engineer to court, but she lost
when the company found an obscure law that barred women
from lifting more than 30 pounds.
>> It was just foolish to use something
like that against women.
Women every day lift babies that weigh more than 30 pounds.
>> Lorena Weeks finally got to do the job, but it took 5 years
and an appeal to the Supreme Court.
>> It was absolutely wonderful.
I couldn't believe it was over.
I was numb.
This was a point of law.
It was a wrong that needed to be made right,
and that's what I was trying to do, to make things better.
>> But it was a scientific breakthrough, not a change
in the law that made the most difference to women's lives.
The birth control pill did more than anything else
to give them an entirely new sort of freedom.
>> This is a highly effective means of contraception.
I think the figures currently being used indicate that it's
about 99.-something effective.
>> By preventing ovulation,
the pill let women control their fertility as never before.
By 1966, 6 million American women used the contraceptive
pill; by 1968, 11 million.
Almost overnight, long-held constraints
on *** behavior could be thrown aside.
[ Singing ]
>> Moral latitudes were changing,
and the *** Revolution was underway.
[ Singing ]
>> Starting at University of Michigan in 1969,
Amy Cowen [assumed spelling] had freedom her mother's generation
had never known.
>> It was just like a new world had opened up to me.
I'm 19 years old.
I'm at a big university, and I'm -- the world is telling me
and Betty Friedan is telling me I can do anything I want.
It's like going from zero to a hundred, and your mind spins.
We didn't know quite what we were doing in our relationships,
but they were going to be equal.
Equal was our word.
Well, one mistake, and you're off in the suburbs
at home having babies and starting a family,
and you are -- it was over.
>> Amy Cowen asked the Student Health Clinic for the pill.
>> I was raised that I wasn't going to have sex
until I was walking down the aisle.
And so there I sat as a college student
with my wonderful partner in the waiting room, and I'm thinking
if we're all equal, why am I in here by myself having to choke
out that I needed the birth control pill?
It sounds funny now, but you know
when I was 19, and it was real hard.
>> Women now expected the pill would make it easier
to combine children with a career.
Amy Cowen went on to graduate, married,
and planned her family with precision.
>> I figured out exactly when I needed to get pregnant
so that this baby would be born 2 weeks after finals,
and then I'd have a 6 week maternity leave,
and then I'd teach a class,
and then I'd be full-time again in the fall.
I was, and it happened.
Twins.
>> Although nature could still confound the best-laid plans,
the pill brought a new equality to relationships.
Ellie Lou Elias [assumed spelling] was determined
to have a small family,
though she knew her husband wanted a large one.
>> Taking the pill meant breaking this tradition
for one thing.
I would have had, or I should have had all the children my
husband wanted.
Without the pill, he would have been able to control me.
Otherwise, he didn't even know when I took it.
I hid them so well that I could keep on taking them
and said I don't know why I'm not getting pregnant.
>> Using the pill, Ellie Lou Elias kept her children to 2.
>> It was like stopping the whole mechanism in the world
against women and against myself.
I stopped being subject to things and being a person.
>> In the age of the pill, and with Betty Friedan
as their Bible, American activists began what soon became
a mass movement.
>> In the name of the mother, of the daughter,
and the holy granddaughter, all women --
>> They knew the importance of publicity
and went all out to court it.
They challenged every example
of male dominance, including the Church.
Jacqui Ceballos, who'd felt trapped,
became a leading campaigner.
>> From childhood, little boys think that they're going to grow
up to be God, and this is consciousness raising.
We're saying, hey, Church, if you really, really think
of all human beings, you better start changing your image
of -- you see that thing?
And God created Woman in her own image.
>> It was a fabulous, fabulous time because it was like a fever
of excitement, of all the women changing their lives.
>> We're not talking about the partnership
because if marriage is anything, it's a partnership.
>> No, no.
I mean if somebody else takes care of that child.
>> Ah.
>> This is what I meant.
>> Well, what are your responsibilities to the kid?
Let me tell you something.
>> There was an anger welling up in you all the time.
Here we were American women.
We had the best life in the world.
What did we want?
They didn't understand that we wanted
to be thinking human beings and take responsibility
of running this world equally with men.
[ Music ]
>> To the feminists, the annual television beauty pageants
seemed a gross offense.
>> Miss Illinois is Miss America.
We are going to sing your song.
[ Singing ]
>> Inside, one set of young women accepted the
chauvinist baubles.
Outside, others carried on with more consciousness raising.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Jacqui Ceballos was there again.
>> We use our brains, not our bodies.
>> We threw bras, and girdles, and stockings,
high high-heeled shoes, and cosmetics into the trashcan.
The press loved it, and we learned very early
on that the press liked crazy things.
So let's use the press.
We didn't burn any bras.
That would have happened if they allowed us to have a fire.
>> The stunts got the coverage they wanted,
but at some risk to their reputation.
>> For those who think that the Women's Liberation Movement is a
joke vaguely connected with burning bras and getting
in the men-only bars, now I disabuse you of that notion.
It is about equal pay and equal opportunity in the job market.
[ Singing ]
>> But despite the setbacks, Western women were managing
to do things they'd not done before.
They could drive racing cars.
[ Background Noise ]
>> Play baseball.
>> It just felt so good to play.
No one could tell me I can't do something just
because I'm a girl.
>> In the professions, they were a tiny minority.
In business, they complained of a glass ceiling.
But in theory, there were now no limits.
>> First American woman to venture
into space will be Dr. Sally K. Ride.
>> Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black woman nominated
for President.
>> From the 1980s on,
commercials told a different story, glamorizing a new type
of woman who was taking charge.
>> What are those?
>> They are the best.
We generally recommend those for ground coffee.
>> Mm. We'll buy all you have of these.
>> Haven't I better clear that with the boss?
>> You just have.
>> With the high-tech skills you learn in the Navy,
when it comes time for you to say something in an interview --
>> I have an extensive background
in avionics and electronics.
I'm computer literate, and I'm pretty good with people.
>> You'll actually have something to say.
>> I hadn't really noticed until I was in my 30s when I kind
of looked up and realized
that you know I made a very decent salary,
and I had a very responsible job,
and I had wonderful children,
that I realized how personally I had benefitted
from all the social changes I had spent my entire life trying
to have happen.
>> We can cross over 50 time zones in less than a week,
and it's a schedule that gives me headaches.
I have crew and 400 passengers that count on me.
>> It gives me a big thrill when I go
up to the cockpit, and see a gal.
I could be a pilot now.
I could be a doctor instead of a nurse, and be a pilot instead
of a flight attendant,
be a senator instead of the secretary.
