It wasn’t always the case that women could jump in their own cars, have a job, get a drink, and do whatever else they wanted. And while women have come a long way in the world, this is especially true in America. Many people are aware that women had to fight for their rights but many don’t know which exact basic rights women were denied.
On the other hand, men (predominantly white), were allowed these same basic benefits. We’re glad times have changed, but some continue to struggle for equal pay- a fight that’s existed for decades- even in the 21st century. To learn about 40 shocking rights women were denied until the 1970s, keep reading.
Women Couldn’t Have Credit Cards
There were many financial moves that women couldn’t make without their husbands. One of these actions was taking out a credit card under their own name. By the law, banks were allowed to deny women credit cards.
A woman’s application for a credit card would receive a “denied” stamp, or she would be instructed to have their husbands sign the form. And for women who weren’t married, the bank would still ask that she bring a male to co-sign the application like a father or brother. Women were finally allowed to take credit cards out in their own name in 1974 when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed.
No Abortions No Matter the Reason
Legal abortions aren’t only today’s hot topic- they’ve been a hot topic for decades. In fact, it was until 1970 that women weren’t legally allowed to have an abortion for any reason until one Texas college student decided to challenge the law.
Her name was Jane Roe and she went up again Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, claiming that she had the right to have an abortion in her own state. The case began in Texas’ Federal Court in 1970 and ended in 1973. The final verdict landed in Roe’s favor, with the infamous Roe vs. Wade case concluding that states who ban abortions are unconstitutional.
No Celebrating International Women’s Day
By the 1970s, women everywhere were exhausted of being treated like a second class citizen. They began demanding equal treatment in every area of their lives all across the world. One of the things they called for was being able to celebrate themselves.
Even though International Women’s Day began in the 1900s, no one in the U.S acknowledged it. The middle of the 1970s brought about a change for International Women’s Day and was finalized in 1980 when President Carter declared that America would celebrate International Women’s week. This also included International Women’s Day, which is March 8th.
Getting Pregnant Could Get You Fired
It wasn’t until 1978, when the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 passed, that women could get fired for becoming pregnant. Although women wouldn’t receive payment for the time missed due to their pregnancy like in today’s world, the act did state that a woman could not be fired if she became pregnant.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act declared such actions as discrimination against women. Unfortunately, the act didn’t include that a woman couldn’t be fired for “other reasons” after becoming pregnant; just that the reason a woman was fired could not be because of her pregnancy.
Women Running the Boston Marathon Were Not Acknowledged
Kathrine Switzer, a student at Syracuse University, was the first female to try to run the Boston Marathon in 1967. At that point in time, the Boston Marathon didn’t acknowledge women runners. Even though Switzer registered, ran, and made history, she was still spat on, taunted, and attacked.
It wouldn’t be until 1972, five years later, that the Boston Marathon would acknowledge women as runners. One of the first of the women to be acknowledged was Nina Kuscsik From Huntington, New York. In 1972, she came in first for the women at 3 hours, 10 minutes, and 26 seconds.
Work Equality for Women Finally Enforced
Females continued to face discrimination and inequality at work, despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on gender or race. It felt like issues continued no matter what Congress passed.
The National Organization of Women decided to focus their attention on these issues in the workplace and make sure that companies enforced these new acts. Sadly, women still face discrimination in the workplace as they are often underpaid and harassed.
Women Weren’t Admitted Into Military Academies
Since the Revolutionary War, women have always had a part in wars, although they weren’t allowed to be in combat roles. It wasn’t until 1976 that women were allowed to enter into a military academy because men simply believe that women wouldn’t be able to make it through.
Finally, in 1976, West Point admitted its first female students. Four years later, on May 28th, 1980, Andrea Hollen and 61 other females graduated from a military academy, becoming the first women to do so. It still wasn’t until 2013, however, that women could fight in combat (per a ban in 1994).
No Protection from Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
In the 1970s, courts deemed people who sexually harassed women in the workplace in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They stated that women should have the ability to protect themselves from sexual advances.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in 1977 that if a woman refused sexual advances from her boss, she could not be fired. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gave definition to sexual harassment in 1980 and declared that it created a hostile work environment. The United States Supreme Court would agree with their ruling six years later.
No Paid Maternity Leave
In 1969, five states agreed that women should be able to take time off around the time they gave birth. This was the first time anything about paid maternity leave became a topic for the news.
Additionally, state courts stated that while out on maternity leave, women should be able to get some sort of compensation. Thus, the Temporary Disability Insurance Act was created. However, this didn’t resolve everything when it came to paid maternity leave. There are still many workplaces that do not give paid maternity leave.
No Direct Consultation from Doctors to Women
If you’ve ever watched the show “Mad Men”, you might remember the part where Betty’s second husband, Henry Frances, discusses Betty’s cancer diagnosis. She is sitting off to the side listening while the doctor and Henry talk.
This is because women used to not be able to receive direct consultation from doctors regarding their health. A husband had to consult with the doctor on his wife’s behalf for many reasons; one being that women would not understand what the doctors were saying.
Women Weren’t Allowed to Say No to Sex From Their Husbands
It wasn’t until the slowly began being able to receive legal protection. Sadly though, very few states would do anything about accusations from women about any kind of spousal rape until the early 1990s.
In 1994, the Violence Against Women Act passed, enabling women to be legally protected from any act of violence(including physical assault and rape) from her husband. Previous to the act, many police departments in American believed that abuse from a husband to his wife was a “private family matter”.
Faster and Easier Divorces
The divorce rate today is much higher than it was 50 years ago. While there are lots of discussions around why, one of the biggest reasons is because women no longer need proof to divorce their husbands. Previously, a woman needed to prove her partner was at fault (oftentimes her husband was cheating) when requesting a divorce.
Lawmakers noticed that some women were having difficulty proving who was at fault. So, they legalized the No-Fault Divorce Act in 1969 which enabled women to file for divorce without any requirement to prove their partner’s fault.
Women Rarely Served As Judges
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the majority of states began selecting women to sit as judges. Before the 70s, women typically didn’t serve.
Historically, women as judges has been a very slow movement, starting as far back as the 1870s when the first female Justice of Peace, Esther Morris, served in the state of Wyoming. The profession continues to grow to this day. Thankfully, the rate of women serving as judges is growing a bit faster than in the past.
No Female Astronauts
Although NASA never blatantly stated that women couldn’t become astronauts, their guidelines never really included women. One of the biggest contributors to this was that NASA only accepted applicants from the military and the military didn’t take women.
These guidelines just disabled women from even interviewing for the possibility of becoming an astronaut. In 1979, however, everything changed when NASA decided to hire women and train them as astronauts. The first female astronaut to go into space was Sally Ride in 1983.
Women Weren’t Admitted Into Ivy League Universities
For a long time, educating males instead of females was the priority. Because of this, women hardly received admittance into universities. On top of this, it was even harder for a woman to apply to Ivy League colleges, like Yale or Harvard.
It wasn’t until just before 1970 that these types of colleges accept women. In 1969, Yale was the first Ivy League school to accept women and soon after, other Ivy League universities began admitting women as well. Sadly though, it happened at a pretty slow rate, with Columbia University accepting women much later in 1983.
Law Wasn’t for Ladies
Women fought for their right to practice law for about a century. Even though female judges and lawyers had existed, it was still scarce to see a woman in the field of law up until the late 1960s and into the early 1970s.
First and foremost, most law schools didn’t admit women into their programs. On top of this, Cornell University ran a study that confirmed that 90% of law firms denied interviewing women who applied for a spot in their firms.
Women Couldn’t Get the Morning After Pill
Yet another thing that women struggled to be able to receive was the morning after pill. Even though the FDA wouldn’t approve the morning after pill until the late 1990s, it existed during the 1970s. This didn’t mean women could get it easily, though.
When the contraceptive became available, women still had to almost secretly find a way to get it. Even today women many women say that they feel ashamed or embarrassed when they have to take the morning-after pill. Professionals believe that the reason behind this is due to the slow acceptance of women and contraception.
Getting Birth Control Was a Struggle
Unlike the morning after pill, birth control thankfully progressed a little faster. The FDA approved birth control in the 1960s, although each state could create its own individual laws regarding the pill. For example, many states prohibited doctors from giving patients birth control pills for various reasons.
Estelle Griswold, a woman in Connecticut, got herself arrested from selling the contraception. Her case then went to the Supreme Court in 1965, where they ruled that married women could get the birth control pill. More states began allowing doctors to prescribe birth control during the 1970s.
Most States Banned Interracial Marriage
The Loving vs. Virginia case is one of the most famous cases of interracial marriage. Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, brought their case forward after being arrested and receiving a prison sentence for their marriage. The case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled that states who prohibited marriage based on color were unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court also ruled that bans on interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court then forced states to allow interracial marriage. This helped increase interracial marriage throughout the 1970s.
Women Rarely Served on a Jury
Another one of the many gray areas in history, women hardly ever served on a jury. Before the 1970s, women participating in a jury was extremely rare, though not impossible.
Once the 20th century came around, it became a law that individual states could decide if women were allowed to serve on a jury. Women began to participate more frequently on juries after 1973, when all 50 states made it a requirement that women were allowed to serve.
Women Also Couldn’t Serve on the Supreme Court
The legal field saw groundbreaking changes for women in the 1970s. More law schools began accepting women in the 70s, they began receiving admittance in law firms, and they could serve as judges. The field of law began to blossom with women interested in a career in law.
It wasn’t until Sandra Day O’Connor received the first female position in the Supreme Court in 1981, just after the 70s. She held this seat until she retired in 2006. Aside from O’Connor, there have been three other women to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court: Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Girls Needed to Be Married to Live With A Man
Most people don’t think twice about living together nowadays. Even common law marriages- living with a partner for a certain amount of years that the state deems you “married”- is becoming more and more common.
But, 50 years ago, this wasn’t the case. In the 1970s, living with a significant other before marriage was against the law in many states. Finally, in 2013, all 50 states accepted the law that couples don't have to be married in order to live together.
Women Couldn’t Buy Sports Shoes
Women’s history in sports is much different than men’s history in sports. Although today most women own a pair of sports shoes, it wasn’t until the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s that women could buy them.
This was mainly due to women not having a considerable spot in the sports world until about the 1970s. However, even though there weren’t any sports shoes designed for women doesn’t mean that they didn’t buy them. Instead, they just bought ones made for men.
Women Were Missing A Voice
Even though women were, of course, able to talk, it didn’t necessarily mean that what they said held any weight. While many females participated in rights marches like suffrage and equal pay, many males, especially those with professional careers, wouldn’t and didn’t have to listen to what women had to say.
Women were speaking out about all kinds of issues. Not only did their opinions include civil and household matters but also matters concerning their own bodies. Up until the 1970s, it was typical that most women had to listen to their husbands on how he wanted things done in his house.
Women Couldn’t Get a Degree In Women’s Studies
The first Women’s Studies program came into existence in Australia in 1956. After that, the program grew across the globe. American colleges, however, didn’t really start catching on to women’s studies until the late 1960s. In 1969, Cornell University was the first college to offer classes on women’s studies.
A year after that, the first Women’s Studies Program to exist in the U.S. was established by San Diego State University. Later, Feminist Studies was established in 1972 and, in 1977, the National Women’s Studies Association was created. The association focuses on women’s history in education.
They Couldn’t Get Just Any Job
Today, it’s difficult to think that women were limited in which jobs they worked before the 1970s. Prior to women calling for gender equality for jobs, women used to only be allowed to apply for certain positions, like a teacher or secretary.
Even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 worked to end discrimination in the workplace, it continued to several states and among many professions. Although employers weren’t legally allowed to deny a woman because of her gender, they could deny women for other reasons. Some employers would find a different reason for not hiring a woman while others would just skip a woman’s application altogether.
Women Weren’t Allowed to Divorce Over Physical Abuse
Getting a divorce was very difficult before the 1970s. Women were required to prove that their husband had violated them in some way in order to file for divorce. Sadly, proof didn’t mean that a woman would be able to successfully get a divorce.
Reasons, like adultery, became acceptable. Other reasons, however, weren’t deemed so acceptable, such as spousal abuse. Even though the 1970s brought the allowance of women to divorce their husbands because of abuse, women couldn’t fully protect themselves officially from domestic violence until the 1990s.
Women Couldn’t Participate in All Olympic Games
While many women still feel that they have a long way to go for complete equality, the past 50 years definitely prove that women have broken through some huge glass barriers throughout history. One of the best examples is the Olympic Games.
Women began participating in the Olympics during the early 1900s. During the 1970s, the number of women participating in the Olympics began to increase considerably. Women soon began adding events like basketball, handball, ice dancing, and rowing in 1976. Today, females continue to add games to their credits. Only recently, in 2012, could women finally compete in boxing.
No Female Bank Owners
Although career choices for women were scarce before the 1970s, this slowly began to change and then boomed in the 1970s. The world of finance and banks became more available to women in search of a career and in 1975 the First Women’s Bank opened in New York City.
It was the first bank to be owned and operated by women for women. Of course, the bank wasn’t accepted by the law immediately, however, it stayed open and is known today as a significant milestone for the 1970s women’s rights movement.
Women Weren’t Allowed to Open a Bank Account
In the same way that women weren’t allowed to get a credit card without their husband’s signature, women also weren't allowed to open a bank account. This is also the reason that women could not own a bank (as she couldn’t even have her own a bank account).
Because men viewed women as delicate creatures who couldn’t comprehend many things, one of the reasons females couldn’t have their own bank account was because it was believed that they couldn’t handle the financial part.
Females Couldn’t Openly Discuss Sex
It’s difficult to picture today, but women couldn’t talk about their sex lives openly (or anything remotely close) before the 1970s. While many women probably discussed the topic of sex with friends in private, it wasn’t socially acceptable to talk about it in public.
It also wasn’t illegal, however, at that time, many women conformed to society’s rules about what people deemed acceptable behavior and what wasn’t acceptable. The book and author of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, completely changed the way women discussed sex.
Mothers Weren’t Allowed to Breastfeed in Public
Breastfeeding in public is still a debated topic today. Before the 1970s, though, it wasn’t even debated because it was not allowed. Women were forbidden to breastfeed their babies in public. On top of this, many mothers were discriminated against for breastfeeding as people worried it could happen in their place of business.
Discrimination against a mother breastfeeding their children came to an end when Congress passed a law declaring that a public place couldn’t discriminate against breastfeeding mothers. They viewed it as a violation of equality rights.
Women Weren’t Allowed a Higher Education
It was normal for women to deal with discrimination in education regularly. On top of not being allowed to get a law degree or get into an Ivy League college before the late 1960s/early 1970s, women continued to face discrimination in many additional ways in the educational setting. Many men just didn’t think women could handle a higher education.
Some people actually thought that girls weren’t smart enough to get a certain level of education. For a long time, the idea that women belonged more in the kitchen than they belong in a school perpetuated unequal treatment and discrimination in the educational system.
Women Had to Be Married to Adopt a Baby
There were many things women couldn’t do before the 1970s and one of these things was that they couldn’t adopt a baby without a male partner. Before the 1970s, while the majority of women stayed home and took care of the children while their husbands worked, lawmakers still believed that a woman shouldn’t adopt a baby without having a husband.
Even if the single women were healthy, lived wealthy, and offered a great home for a child, she could not adopt a baby because she wasn’t married.
Women Couldn’t Be the CEO of A Fortune 500 Company
It’s probably no surprise that it took until 1972 for a woman to become the first CEO of a Fortune 500 Company, given that there were so many laws, rules, and regulations around women before the 1970s.
The first female CEO of a Fortune 500 Company in U.S. history was Katherine Graham. Graham took over The Washington Post in 1972 and while doing so wasn’t breaking any laws, it surely broke some barriers for women in America.
Women Were Viewed Like They Didn’t Have Their Own Mind
Even though women have always had their own minds long before the 1970s, it didn’t exactly mean that their minds were considered valuable. In fact, they were viewed as quite the opposite. While women slowly began to acquire certain tasks, men felt women were capable of doing only certain tasks like cooking, cleaning the house, and taking care of the kids.
Another great example of this was that women needed permission from their husbands to do many things. A few things that women needed their husband’s permission for were getting a job or his signature to take out a credit card.
Women Shifted Their Focus From Marriage to Education
Beginning in the late 1960s to early 1970s, women started to focus more on higher education than getting married and having kids right after high school. The idea was a dramatic change from just a few years before when the reason women often got married out of high school was because there wasn’t a lot for them in higher education.
Higher education started to become more important to women than getting married. This was partially due to Ivy League colleges accepting women and just overall more female professionals.
There Were Very Few In Politics
There may have been a few females who landed a chair in the political arena, both locally and nationally, however, before the 1970s politics and women weren’t a hot topic. Just nearing the end of the 1960s and early 1970s did we see an increase in females in the political field.
Actually, in 1970, about twelve ladies had a seat in Congress. Additionally, women continued to write their names on ballots, essentially finding their political careers, within their very own neighborhoods.
They Rallied Against The Miss American Pageant
In the late 1960s, women took the traditional Miss America pageant and made a political statement. The year of 1968 witnessed women all around America protest the Miss America pageant. Their protest was that the Miss America pageant promoted sexism. Women everywhere were fighting to be viewed like humans and not just an object.
They wanted to be able to be seen as human beings, just like men, and feel like they mattered. This same mentality, that women are not a piece of property or sexual objects, was carried strongly by females into the 1970s.
Women Had to Fight for Their Right to Protest
Women rarely held protests and marches before the late 1960s and early 1970s, and if they did, they often experienced hostility from men and other women. Thankfully, it all started changing in the 1970s, when men began to join women’s protests for equality and rights.
In addition, females started to protest past the discriminatory practices they faced in the U.S. Females all over America protested for all different types of reasons- something that hadn’t been often seen in the United States.