Learn about the myths and realities of women's lives during the 1950s. This was the age of respectability and conformity. “America at this …
In many cases, a woman’s lot seems to have hardly improved by marriage. Search. If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website. Just 1.2 per cent of women went to university in the 1950s. Women had, during World War II, taken men’s jobs while they had been away at war. Courses. The 1950s family home was also very different from our own.

Many of them became wives and mothers as the men came back from the war. The 1950s were a decade marked by the post-World War II boom, the dawn of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement in the United States. We can wear a stiff, full skirt, vintage aprons, masses of lipstick, absurd hair and play at having afternoon teas and being as ultra-feminine and retro as we want. Post-feminist revolution, 1950s housewives carry a certain amount of hip kudos. Women’s roles were greatly changed in the 1950s, with the men coming back from war and taking their jobs back. Very few women worked after getting married; they stayed at home to raise the children and keep house. The life of the average married woman in the 1950s and 60s was very different from that of today’s woman. Now that we have equality (or a facsimile thereof) we don't have to be on the defensive anymore. Learn about the myths and realities of women's lives during the 1950s. After the war, many women wanted to keep their jobs. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. Housework was much more difficult, as for example people did their washing by hand, instead of in a machine, and with refrigerators being a luxury item for most people, food had to be bought daily. It was less common for married women to work and many took on the childcare and housework, while their husbands went to work.