Book contents
- A Century of Votes for Women
- A Century of Votes for Women
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Women at the Polls
- Chapter 2 Women Without the Vote
- Chapter 3 Explaining Women Voters
- Chapter 4 Enter the Women Voters
- Chapter 5 Feminine Mystique and the American Voter
- Chapter 6 Feminism Resurgent
- Chapter 7 The Discovery of the Gender Gap
- Chapter 8 Women Voters in the New Millennium
- Chapter 9 A Century of Votes for Women
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 5 - Feminine Mystique and the American Voter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2020
- A Century of Votes for Women
- A Century of Votes for Women
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Women at the Polls
- Chapter 2 Women Without the Vote
- Chapter 3 Explaining Women Voters
- Chapter 4 Enter the Women Voters
- Chapter 5 Feminine Mystique and the American Voter
- Chapter 6 Feminism Resurgent
- Chapter 7 The Discovery of the Gender Gap
- Chapter 8 Women Voters in the New Millennium
- Chapter 9 A Century of Votes for Women
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The decades of the 1940s and 1950s conjure conflicting images of American women. The strong and independent Rosie the Riveter of the Second World War soon gave way to June Cleaver, the perfect suburban mother. Betty Friedan would later describe this aggressive reassertion of traditional gender roles as “the feminine mystique.” For women and politics, this era is usually cast – if discussed at all – as one of relative political quiescence, sandwiched between impassioned Progressive and suffrage activism and the second wave of the women’s movement. While the view that women were absent from politics in the immediate postwar period has been challenged on several grounds, our understanding of women as voters during this period remains limited and often characterized more by stereotypes than evidence.
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- A Century of Votes for WomenAmerican Elections Since Suffrage, pp. 88 - 124Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020