Full Description From website:
Picking up where her previous successful, and highly lauded book, America's Women, left off, Gail Collins recounts the sea change women have experienced since 1960. A comprehensive mix of oral history and Collins's keen research, this is the definitive book about five crucial decades of progress, told with the down-to-earth, amusing, and agenda-free tone this beloved New York Times columnist is known for. The interviews with women who have lived through these transformative years include an advertising executive in the 60s who was not allowed to attend board meetings that took place in the all-male dining room; and an airline stewardess who remembered being required to bend over to light her passengers' cigars on the men-only 'Executive Flight' from New York to Chicago.
We, too, may have forgotten the enormous strides made by women since 1960--and the rare setbacks. "Hell yes, we have a quota [7%]" said a medical school dean in 1961. "We do keep women out, when we can." At a pre-graduation party at Barnard College, "they handed corsages to the girls who were engaged and lemons to those who weren't." In 1960, two-thirds of women 18-60 surveyed by Gallup didn't approve of the idea of a female president. Until 1972, no woman ran in the Boston Marathon, the year when Title IX passed, requiring parity for boys and girls in school athletic programs (and also the year after Nixon vetoed the childcare legislation passed by congress). What happened during the past fifty years--a period that led to the first woman's winning a Presidential Primary--and why? The cataclysmic change in the lives of American women is a story Gail Collins seems to have been born to tell.
About Author:
Gail Collins was the Editorial Page Editor for the New York Times from 2001-2007--the first woman to have held that position. She currently writes a column for the Time's Op-Ed page twice weekly.
©2009
My take on the book selection:
This book was more than interesting, it was empowering and inspirational! For any women out there, American or not, this book will show you how far we've come in society. Discussing all issues and rights surrounding women. There were things in the book I had just learned. I had no idea how things really were back in the 50's or 60's, I was not born yet. I do have a respect for women who endured that time, whether as a child, young girl or woman. I couldn't imagine living the life they did, with less respect and rights as today. Today's woman is quite lucky I think. The book was very well written, and I didn't feel I needed to be American to connect with the stories in it. I believe it was written truthfully and with the best intentions. For that I highly recommend you read. Woman or man. You may learn something as I did. If not, it is still a great set of historical stories.
~I did not receive any compensation for this post. This is my honest opinion.~
Sounds like a good book and a good reminder. Sometimes I forget that it wasn't really that long ago.
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