Women’s roles in the 1950s

Women’s roles in the 1950s

Women’s roles in the 1950s were more defined as reproducing and staying at home. The ideal image of a woman was that of mother and homemaker. Women were supposed to reproduce and up bring children who would be the workers of the future. The new age of industrial capitalism redefined the woman’s place, it demonstrated the social construction approach where differences in gender roles became constructed by the economic status of the country.

Black women were profoundly affected by these differences in the sense that they got excluded in reference to their color. Black women were enslaved and worked as servants for the whites as a means to be able to stay at home. They were oppressed and felt the social segregation more than white women who could afford to stay at home without any work.  All women were disadvantaged but black women faced it more roughly.

Intersectionality defines how systems of oppression are interconnected to social challenges or privileges. The role of the woman was categorized into that of the homemaker while the man became the breadwinner. It allowed men to work and provide for their families while women were supposed to remain home and take care of the house and children. Women, therefore, assumed the lower position of just staying at home, thus creating inequality on social roles. As these inequalities prevailed, they led to other differences, such as the pay inequality between men and women. Black women had the least power in the new economy compared to the white, wealthy middle-class women who were able to retain some social status. The low status was accorded to the women of color, therefore, making them socially segregated by both color and race. Black women were forced to work domestically as slaves for free or minimum pay.