Unit 8

Unit 8 Written Assignment

SS 310 Exploring the 1960s

By:

Vonda L. Shields

Professor Susan Fournier

Tuesday October 25, 2011

The Women’s Liberation Movement

In the beginning of time, women had been working to advance their place in today’s society. During the Stone Age in the 20th century, individuals and organized groups had felt that women were treated unequally, and they vowed to do something about it. In the 1960s and 1970s was the peak of the movement where the Women’s Liberation Movement was recognized as an organized effort to gain equality of women.

In ancient times, women of the Prehistoric Age were first considered inferior through division of labor. The men were sent to hunt, and the women stayed at home gathering vegetables while taking care of the children. The sexuality roles that was implied that women were too fragile and weak to go out hunting with the men (Sinclair 184). The New Stone Age, or Neolithic Age, kept women’s status inferior to that of men. They were still in charge of gathering and farming, which led them to many technological advances in the fields of plowing and cooking. The contributions of women were unmatched by most during this era, the men still reigned supreme (Sinclair 186). During the years, scientist Sigmund Freud found some astounding conclusions about humans through his research. He found that the development of boys and girls were similar until the age of five where this stage begins. According to Freud, woman is passive, masochistic, and narcissistic (Sinclair 16). This conclusion is the basis for the feeling of inferiority placed upon women from Freud’s time until the present.

In the mid-1800s when the first signs of the feminist movement came about. In 1861, a man named John Mill wrote a book “The Subjection of Women,” this was said to have spawned the ideology of the Women’s Rights Movement (Ryan 11). He discusses the role of women in today’s society during that time, pointing out how...