20 Ordinary Things Women Couldn't Do In The '50s And '60s

Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide, and formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century and feminist movement during the 20th century. In some countries, these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others they are ignored and suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls, in favor of men and boys You might think 1960 wasn't THAT long ago. But it was a whole other world when it comes to sexism and women's rights. In 1960, women were banned from doing a ton of stuff that young women nowadays take for granted. Can you believe it's just 56 years ago, and your grandma or maybe even your mom lived through it? 1. Open A Bank Account. At least, not without their husband or a male relative’s permission until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. 2. Serve Jury Duty. Slowly, states separately allowed women to sit in the jury box over the years until Mississippi finally became the last state to legalize it in 1968. 3. Practice Law. Even if they had gone through all the years of school and passed every test, women could still be denied the right to plead a client’s case until 1971. 4. Breastfeed In Public. Public areas were still able to prohibit mothers from breastfeeding until a bill was finally passed by Congress, making this discrimination illegal. Click "Next" to see more things women couldn't do in the 1950's and the 1960's. 5. Attend a military academy. I guess this isn’t much of a surprise, but West Point didn't admit women until 1976 (before Harvard!). 6. Take birth control pills Photo Credit: Pixabay They were available in 1960, but several states continued to ban them through the following decade. 7. Become an astronaut. Photo Credit: Public Domain Sally Ride was the first woman to accomplish the feat in 1978. 8. Attend an Ivy League University. Yale and Princeton got on board in 1969, but Harvard held out until 1977. Click "Next" to see more things women couldn't do in the 1950's and the 1960's. 9. Run in the Boston Marathon. In 1967, Katherine Switzer became the first woman to complete the race. Women were not officially allowed to run the marathon until 1972. 10. Refuse to have sex with your husband. Until the 1970s, marital rape wasn't illegal. Rape was defined in all US states as follows: "a male who has sexual intercourse with a female, not his wife is guilty of rape if..." 11. Take time off to have a baby. If a woman happened to have a job, she would lose it if she wanted to take any maternity leave before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. 12. Get divorced easily. Before the 1969 No Fault Divorce law, divorce could only be obtained if you proved your spouse had committed serious faults such as adultery. This law negatively impacted men as well as women, of course. For more things that women couldn't do back in the 1950's and 1960's, Click "Next." 13. Live with their boyfriend anywhere in the US. Incredibly, in 2013 living together before marriage was still illegal in 4 US states. In 2011 several Florida couples were even charged with misdemeanors under the state's anti-cohabitation law. 14. Become a Supreme Court Justice. There wasn't a law stopping women from serving on the Supreme Court, but no women were appointed until Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981. As of 2015, there are three women out of the nine SCOTUS judges. 15. Get a job without being rejected simply for being female. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was perfectly legal to discriminate against women on the grounds of your gender when you were considering whom to hire or promote. 16. Marry another woman. The US movement to gain civil marriage rights for same-sex couples began in the 70s, but it wasn't legal anywhere until 2004 when Massachusetts became the first state to allow it. As of 2015, same-sex marriage is legal in 36 US states. Of course, this legal barrier applied to men just as much as women. For more things that women couldn't do back in the 1950's and 1960's, Click "Next." 17. Get a mortgage. A married woman would likely have to get her husband's signature in order to get a mortgage. 18. Adopt a baby as a single woman. This was possible in some U.S. states, but some states passed regulations banning it or making it difficult. That gradually changed in the 1960s, as state adoption agencies started actively recruiting single women to widen the pool of potential adopters. 19. Become presidential nominee for a major political party. Hillary Clinton was the first woman ever to receive a major party nomination in 2016. Before that, women had run for president, but they stood no chance because they weren't major-party nominees. Victoria Claflin Woodhull was the very first female candidate for president all the way back in 1872. 20. Seek legal redress for being discriminated against in school. Women didn't have much legal recourse if they faced sexism in the classroom. It wasn't until 1972 that Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, banning educational discrimination on the grounds of gender, became law. Source: (Offbeat, Did You Know Facts )