Women's Civil Rights: Obstacles and Struggles in America
This paper examines the key obstacles that women encountered in American history, focusing on the post-World War II era through the mid-1960s. Drawing on DuBois and Dumenil's Through Women's Eyes, the paper identifies three central barriers: labor segregation and domestic containment, racial discrimination targeting Black women in the workforce, and social policing of female sexuality. It then traces the ways women responded to these obstacles through organizations such as the Women's Bureau, the National Manpower Council, and the Women's Political Council, as well as through liberal feminist advocacy and civil rights activism. The paper argues that gendered expectations persisted across race, class, and education levels, requiring sustained collective resistance to achieve any meaningful progress.
- Introduction: Thesis on persistent gendered roles in America
- Obstacles Women Encountered in American History: Labor segregation, racial bias, and sexual policing
- Ways Women Responded to and Overcame Those Obstacles: Activism, unions, and civil rights organizing
- Conclusion: Gendered expectations persist across race and class
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper presents a clear, three-part structure for its central argument, identifying distinct categories of obstacles and matching them with corresponding responses, which makes the analysis easy to follow.
- It grounds its claims in a specific historical period (1945–1965), giving the argument focus and preventing overgeneralization across centuries.
- The paper draws on both primary source material (Betty Friedan's 1963 writing) and a comprehensive secondary text, demonstrating how to use sources to support and illustrate analytical points.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses a parallel structure—presenting each obstacle followed by its corresponding response—which mirrors the cause-and-effect reasoning common in historical analysis. This technique keeps the reader oriented and reinforces the paper's central thesis that women's collective action was a direct and necessary answer to institutional oppression.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis-driven introduction stating its central hypothesis about gendered roles. The body is divided into two main analytical sections: one cataloguing three distinct obstacles (labor segregation, racial discrimination, and sexual policing), and one tracing three categories of response (advocacy agencies, union activism, and civil rights organizing). A brief conclusion restates the thesis with broader reflective commentary, followed by a bibliography citing the primary source text.
Introduction
Getting paid equally to men, gaining fair representation in the workforce, and confronting sexual violence are issues that women have faced since ancient times. This paper hypothesizes that the gendered role a woman is expected to fulfill — regardless of her age, race, or marital status — persists stubbornly, and that women's struggle to change the mentality of a male-dominated society continues no matter how high their education or how broadly modernism has endeavored to reshape public attitudes.
Obstacles Women Encountered in American History
The first obstacle that American women faced was labor segregation and racial discrimination in everyday life. The period between 1945 and 1965 was full of contradictions regarding women's role in society, as the prevailing generalization confined women to the domestic sphere (DuBois and Dumenil 2016, 534). Women who worked outside the home were not accepted wholeheartedly, and deep anxiety rooted in racial discrimination compounded these pressures. Betty Friedan, in her 1963 book, described how the post-war era imposed a rigid domestic containment on women, whose only recognized role was caring for their homes, husbands, and children (DuBois and Dumenil 2016, 541). This restricted model of womanhood was reinforced by substantial differences in class, race, and ethnic background, which together prevented a large portion of women from entering the workforce at all. Friedan's supplemental writing further reveals that women deemed appropriate for domestic roles — including many who were educated enough to qualify for professional careers but chose or were pressured into becoming housewives and mothers — suffered from depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, psychotherapy, and dependence on sleeping pills (DuBois and Dumenil 2016, 543). Confinement to the home caused serious physical and mental health consequences for these women.
The second obstacle fell with particular weight on Black and African American women, who faced racial discrimination as an additional barrier to workforce participation. While White women managed to secure "respectable" employment positions, Black women were either barred from applying for suitable posts or were forced to endure harassment from employers (DuBois and Dumenil 2016, 546). The so-called "marriage bar" was also imposed during this era as a mechanism to prevent women from pursuing desired careers after marriage.
The third obstacle was the social fear surrounding women's sexual promiscuity. Post-war statistics published at the time revealed that 50% of women were reported to have engaged in premarital intercourse, 90% were attributed with "petting," and 28% were said to have homosexual inclinations (DuBois and Dumenil 2016, 539). These figures fueled a powerful social taboo directed specifically at women, with men frequently positioned as moral arbiters. Female virginity was treated as a treasure to be preserved for marriage, while no equivalent standard was applied to men, who faced no equivalent scrutiny for premarital relationships or extramarital involvement. The prioritization of female virginity remained a daily burden for women of ordinary families, particularly as they approached marriageable age.
Conclusion
There is a gendered role that a woman is expected to fulfill, regardless of her age, race, or marital status. Women have struggled since ancient times to change the thinking of a male-dominated society — a struggle that persists across socioeconomic classes and educational levels, and one that continues even as contemporary culture has shifted in matters of dress, social norms, and public attitudes. Gender and sex are not simply terms describing biological differences between men and women; rather, they reflect the attitudes and perceptions that societies construct and impose over time. It is women who have borne, and continue to bear, the weight of those unending hardships — and it is their collective resistance that has driven every meaningful advance in women's civil rights.
Bibliography
DuBois, Ellen Carol, and Lynn Dumenil. Through Women's Eyes: An American History with Documents. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016.
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