Why were women in the 1950s so mistreated by society?

According to this book: The way we never were, it talks about how women were viewed by society in general. It says...





*Women who could not walk the fine line between nuturing motherhood and castaring "momism" or who had trouble adjusting to "creative homemaking" were labeled neurotic, perverted, or schizophrenic. Shock therapies were sometimes given to women who did not obey to their husband's orders or to "force" a woman to accept their domestic roles, and they were also given to women who didn't want a baby because it was viewed as a mental illness or a "dangerous emotional disturbance."





* All women, even the most docile ones, were deeply mistrusted. They were frequently denied the right to serve on juries, convey property, make contracts, take out credit cards in their own names, or establish residence.





* A 1954 Enquire article called working women a "menace", and a Life author termed married women's employment a "disease." The 1947 bestseller, The Modern Woman called feminism, "a deep illness."





* In the 1950s, women were labeled as "unnatural" if they did not seek fulfillment in motherhood, women were told that "no other experience in life will provide the same fulfillment, of happiness, of complete pervading contentment" as motherhood.





* As sociologist David Riesman noted, a woman's failure to bear children went from being a "social advantage and somtimes a personal tragedy" in the 19th Century to being a "quasi-perverion" in the 1950s.





* A 1957 Gallup survery poll noted that 80% of Americans believed single women were "sick, nuerotic, and immoral."





* A poll in 1955 noted that 88% of Americans viewed single mothers as very undesirable people.





Whew, it sounded tough to be a woman back in the '50s. I definetely would have not wanted to be a woman back then.|||Hm...weird. I guess I would expect that kind of thing. Even in Cosmo today you'll see articles about how to please your man, and how to do this and that and whatever in order to keep him happy - you know, still not very empowered toward women if you think about it.





Anyway, there is always going to be bad stigma for being a women who does this, or a black person who does that, because society will always have it's own stupid standards that are slow and closed minded (%26lt;--lack of a better term...)





I don't think, according to the stats you provided, that it would have been so much harder to be a woman back then. Now, I have to flirt for my pay (I'm a bartender/server...boys talk about the game and get tips, I talk about the game and get ignored until I turn around and pick up a napkin off the ground...) so it isn't just my husband I have to please, but everyone else. Also, now if I'm into having babies and being a mother, I'm going against all the hard work my mother and her mother did to make sure I didn't have to do that. Like it's a bad thing to stay at home, and if I go to work I have to try twice as hard. But that's not to say it isn't hard being a man.





Most every person will feel some sort of struggle in their life though...only, time (and social views of that time) might change *which* struggle that is.





I feel like this is a very disorganized answer...well, comment (^_^)





Anyway, thanks for the info, and yes I agree, I wouldn't have wanted to be a woman back then - but I wouldn't have wanted to be a man back then either. I like the world enough now - like I said, there are always going to be trials, so I might as well be tried while I can at least indulge in modern things like...idk...open house party LOL|||Looking at those percentages, I think you could place 2009 in front of them and not be too far off. How many single women do you know that are happy being single?