Betty Friedan Equality

Equality in the United States is often viewed a liberty and unalienable right of every citizen. The problem that arises as you begin to look deeper into history is that you begin to realize that equality and certain rights are only given to you if you are a white, Anglo-Saxon male. If you were white, but you were a female, you could be denied rights, and if you were a male but not white could also could be mistreated. Often, Americans tried to enforce the idea of separate but equal. They were successful in the separation, but often lacked in the element of equality. You would often find that in fact, it is the white males that enforce the inequality on people that are “other” than them, rather than promoting togetherness, and equality. …show more content…
The ex-soldiers wanted their old jobs back, and for the women to return to home life, even if that’s not what the women wanted. As the women began to return to the home, they began to feel unfulfilled. Now that they had realized their potential in the working world, it was hard for them to return housewifery and home life. The book the “Feminist Mystique” by Betty Friedan, detailed the struggle that young women faced as they were again told to go back to the lifestyle of pre-World War II women. The young women were “taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights- “. The 1950’s were an era that again told women that they should be ashamed if they wanted something more in life than to simply be a housewife. It was the return of the so called “American Dream” of the husband going off to work and the wife having to stay …show more content…
Then in 1954, there were two major court trials, Smith vs. Albright and Brown vs. Board of Education. The latter case, Brown vs. Board of Education was influential in the beginning of integration of public schools. The case ruled that states could not have separate schools for white and black children. The next year in 1955, the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott began, after Rosa Parks was arrested, following her refusal to give up her seat for a white passenger. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for over a year, as members of the African American community banded together to protest the treatment that they often received on public transportation, always being told to move, or being put in the worst seats in a vehicle. Many African Americans from other towns, who owned cars, came to Montgomery to aide in the boycott by offering alternate