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11 Ordinary things Women weren’t allowed to do in the ‘50s & ‘60s in the States

Take a look to see just how many surprising things women were not allowed to do back in the day.

  1. Open a Bank Account: Women could not open a bank account without their husband or a male relatives permission until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974
  2. Serve Jury Duty: Slowly, states separately allowed women to sit in the jury box over the years until Mississippi finally became the last state to legalize it in 1968
  3. Practice Law: Even if women had gone through all the years of school and passed every test, women could still be denied the right to plead a client’s case until 1971
  4. Take Birth Control Pills: The contraceptive was approved in 1960, but it was still banned in several states for the next few years
  5. Go on Maternity Leave: If a women was able to have a job, they most often lost it, when they became pregnant until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978
  6. Breastfeed in Public: Public areas were still able to prohibit mothers from breastfeeding until a bill was finally passed by Congress making this discrimination illegal
  7. Attend an Ivy League University: Harvard would not allow women applicants until 1977, but Yale and Princeton were only slightly ahead by admitting their first female students in 1969
  8. Attend a Military Academy: The first female students at West Point Academy were not accepted until 1976
  9. Run the Boston Marathon: The legendary marathon was an all-male event until 1972
  10. Serve in Combat: Despite all of the hard work women have put into the military for decades, they were not allowed on front lines until very recently in 2013
  11. Become an Astronaut: NASA denied women until Sally Ride broke the mold in 1978

We are obviously still battling against several issues today, but seeing the things my mother and grandmother were forced to endure has really opened my eyes. I always knew things were different back in the day, but I cannot believe how long it took for a wife to not be legally classified as “subordinate” to her husband, much less how difficult it was for a single women to get her own bank account and credit card.

Some of these setbacks were cleared up in the 1970s and 1980s, but I was shocked by how recently a few of these restrictions were still in place.

 

https://www.littlethings.com/things-women-couldnt-do-50s/?utm_source=clover&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=history

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