EDUC247 Lecture Notes - Lecture 51: Gloria Steinem, Playboy Bunny, Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill
2 Nov 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Women’s Rights in the 1960s
• Women’s rights
o Changes underway in the 60s that also divided people
o Some people believed it’s okay for women to be overtly sexual
▪ Playboy Bunnies
• They were told exactly how to act and behave
▪ Did it really degrade or empower them?
• Was it objectifying them? Or liberating them?
o Helen Brown didn’t get married until she was 37
▪ She liked being single and liked working
▪ She liked dating married men
▪ She said it was okay to be a sex object if it was okay for you
▪ She said marriage is fine, but it’s really just insurance for when you get older
• Make use of the birth control pill
• Have fun until you settle down
o One problem is talking about women as “girls”
▪ Also tying worth to attraction to men
o Gloria Steinem
▪ Don’t call adult women “girls,” one of her many differences with Helen Brown
▪ “I would say that each of us had only one thing to gain from the feminist
movement: our whole humanity.”
▪ Supported the protest against the Miss America pageant
▪ Argued against forcing women flight attendants to retire at the age of 30 because
they weren’t attractive enough anymore
o Traditionally male majors start to attract women
▪ Not 50/50, but more women
▪ Engineering
▪ Co-education in what had been single-sex schools
