In 1950's America, women had little control over their own lives. They were stuck at home barefoot and pregnant. They weren't valued or respected in the same ways men were. They had no real career options. They were dependent on their husbands, for better or for worse. Women as a group were repressed and unhappy.
Or were they?
Conventional wisdom today paints a picture of the mid-century housewife that looks like - well - Betty Draper. Sad, trapped, powerless, frustrated Betty Draper. But if we look at how people back then actually saw themselves, a very different image emerges. If film and television reflect the current culture, we can gain insight into
how people viewed themselves by looking at the icons of the day.
What we find is that female icons of the 50s were hardly timid, obedient doormats at the mercy and whim of the male power structure. Quite the contrary, they were the likes of Lauren Bacall, Maureen O'Hara and Katherine Hepburn, whose power and influence left legions of heartbroken, defenseless men in its wake! Their power came not from attempting to "beat men at their own game", but from their brilliant and bold expressions of femininity.
Could it be that modern feminism got it all wrong? That we abdicated our true power in favor of some second-rate version of masculinity - and that in doing so we've actually made women less happy, less powerful and less fulfilled than their mid-century counterparts?
To answer that question we need to put aside conventional wisdom and find out how life really was in the 50s. Were women truly as unhappy and stifled as we're given to believe? Are women in fact happier today? Is American society stronger and healthier as a result of feminism? Let's take a look.
Were women in fact unhappy and unfulfilled in the '30s, '40s and '50s?
What kind of children did they raise? It's probably safe to assume that unhappy, repressed women generally do not beget happy, smart, productive children. This would be even more true retrospectively since most women back then stayed home with their
children rather than dropping them off at day care, amplifying the impact they would have had on their children's' psyches.
So how did they turn out? Well, in 1969 the children of those powerless, repressed women living under a misogynistic patriarchy figured out how to put a man on the moon! We also know that between 1945 and 1960, the gross national product more than doubled,
growing from $200 billion to more than $500 billion. Unemployment rates, crime rates, housing costs and inflation were all low, while middle class wages, literacy rates and high school graduation rates were soaring. America, by any objective measure we have available to us was thriving and growing.
This alone should lead us to question our assumptions about the mothers of those remarkable achievers. It also forces us to confront two possibilities. Either:
- Unhappy women raise overwhelmingly happy, productive children, in which case we need to revisit the claim, "I'll be a better parent if I'm happy and fulfilled" - or,
- Women were actually quite fulfilled in their roles providing strength and encouragement to their husbands and raising smart, happy, inventive children.
Has modern feminism made women happier?
Let's turn to data which are statistically linked to stress rates and depression. These include suicide rates, drug addiction/abuse rates and stress-related conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, ulcers and infertility (which is frequently cited as a cause of depression among women today). If women of the 40's and 50's were chronically unhappy and feeling trapped and devalued, we'd expect them to suffer from much higher rates of these types of conditions. But that's not at all what we find. By all objective accounts these numbers are far higher today especially among women than they've ever been before (see below for links to common data sources).
Note: One could rightly argue that "Women's issues were undiagnosed or under-reported." Maybe. Maybe not. We simply have no way to accurately measure if and to what extent that is true. Likewise, one could say that women have heart attacks today for all sorts of reasons other than stress or depression - environmental changes, food preservatives, moon cycles and so on. But it would only be speculation since we don't have any credible data linking those factors to heart attacks in women, while the correlation between happiness and stress-related illnesses (in both men and women) has been well documented for decades.
The actual data seem to invalidate the claim that women are happier today than they were in 1950. Have we cut off our noses to spite our faces? Women of the 50s didn't have to worry about finding a replacement sitter when they were up against a deadline and the nanny called in sick. They didn't have to stress about skipping work to attend parent meetings at school. They didn't have to spend evenings and weekends catching up on laundry, housework and chores. They didn't have to make arrangements for someone to pick up the kids from school when they had to work late. They didn't have to call in sick because a child was home with the flu. They didn't have to dash out of the office every day, pick up the kids
at day care, stop at the store for groceries, cook dinner, help with
homework, bathe the little ones, read bedtime stories and tuck everyone
in - all after a stressful day at the office. Honest women can't deny that while modern feminism may have improved certain aspects of our lives, it has also given rise to an entirely new set of stresses which can seriously impact our happiness.
Did some of our 1950s counterparts wish they had broader career options? Sure, some did. Did some wish they could divorce their husbands without financial devastation or public shame? No doubt about it. I just wonder how those troubles stack up against all the new ones we've inherited in the name of a "better life" for women.
And what about society in general? Has society benefited from the feminist movement? Societal health is measured by things like cost of living, crime rates, housing costs, unemployment levels, literacy rates, healthcare costs, percentages of high school and college graduates, and so on.
Suffice it to say that by any measure we have available to us today, society was extraordinarily successful in the 1950s. In fact the data seem to indicate that it was more successful in many ways than American society in 2015. We can debate why this is true - the issues are many and complex. Nobody is claiming that the reason for the downtrend is women in the workforce! But to claim that modern feminism has improved life in America - for women or for anyone else - would simply have no basis in fact.
Still, the feminist movement is lauded unchallenged as a huge leap forward for women. Maybe it's time to ask ourselves on what basis we make that assumption.
Maybe conventional wisdom has it wrong and Betty Draper has little to do with reality after all. Maybe the truth looks a lot more like Lauren, Maureen and Katherine standing up tall and defiant, hands on hips and chins in the air, eyes blazing, setting the record straight.
Postscript:
In a world where women are indeed powerful, would they be so quick to sue men for saying offensive things? Before you start licking envelopes to send me your hate male - it goes without saying that physical violence should NEVER be tolerated. However when I see women suing men over saying offensive things or looking at them the wrong way, they strike me as no different than a petulant little girl who goes running to Daddy because someone was mean to her on the playground. Just because she's running to her lawyer now instead of Daddy, she is no more powerful than the sad little girl who needs someone to rescue her. A strong woman ignores rude remarks, walks away, or issues a clever comeback when it's safe to do so - she doesn't need her Daddy or anyone else to save her.
I recognize that many of you will disagree. Some may even call me ignorant, naive, wrongheaded or worse. That's perfectly ok, I can take it like a man :-)
