Chapter 10 Flashcards
What development was a factor that contributed to Americans’ postwar prosperity?
The GI Bill, which aided families in securing education and starting businesses
What aspect of society did Alfred Kinsey’s report expose, shocking many in post-World War II America?
Changes in sexual behavior among women and men
What impact did the recruitment of white students have on Freedom Summer?
It created tension within the movement between white and black women.
What was Betty Friedan referring to when she wrote about “the problem that has no name” in The Feminine Mystique?
Female disillusionment with societal restrictions and traditional roles
How did the women of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) exemplify 1950s labor activism?
They challenged racial discrimination in their industry.
What was historically ironic about women’s labor in the 1950s?
Despite the emphasis on domesticity, increasing numbers of married women and mothers entered the workforce.
For what problem did Casey Hayden and Mary King criticize SNCC in their discussion paper?
Denying women equal participation in decision making
What mass protest led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)?
The Greensboro sit-in
Why was challenging the gendered structure of the workplace a problem for women’s unions?
Women activists had long supported protective labor legislation.
What recommendation made by the President’s Commission on the Status of Women benefited poor black and Chicana women?
Expansion of the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act
What two major realities did 1950s American culture try to balance?
Unprecedented prosperity and a feeling of insecurity
One fundamental contradiction of the mission of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women was between
advancing women’s careers and preserving their traditional roles.
How did the Cold War affect ideas about American women’s domestic roles?
It promoted a revised cult of domesticity.
How did the Red Scare after World War II spill over into private life?
The hunt for subversives targeted people with nonconformist sexual lives, particularly suspected homosexuals.
What was significant about women’s participation in the Community Service Organization in the Mexican American community?
Women were about half the organization’s membership and much of its clerical support.
What did the Supreme Court rule in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)?
Segregated schools were unconstitutional.
Ella Baker believed that she could never have a permanent leadership position in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) because she
was a woman and not a minister.
Women served as “bridge leaders” in the civil rights movement by
organizing communities to take particular actions in support of civil rights.
How did the civil rights movement help revive the feminist movement?
It gave middle-class women exposure to female activist role models, like Ella Baker.
Women Strike for Peace (WSP) came into the public spotlight on November 1, 1961 when it
staged demonstrations in forty communities protesting the nuclear arms race.
Why did the U.S. Department of Labor encourage the employment of women in the 1950s?
It believed the nation needed “womanpower” to maintain prosperity and compete with the Soviet Union.
In what way were women the backbone of the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
Women, more than men, depended on public transportation to travel to their jobs.
What was behind Rosa Parks’s decision to challenge segregation on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus?
Parks’s background as a civil rights activist for fifteen years
In his best-selling childrearing book Baby and Child Care (1946), what did Dr. Benjamin Spock state about motherhood?
Mothers should focus on childrearing rather than careers outside the home.
What significant development occurred during Freedom Summer of 1964?
The capitulation of long-standing southern resistance to black voting rights
What did the organization Daughters of Bilitis defend?
Lesbian rights
What was the 1956 movement known as Operation Coffee Cup?
A series of small social gatherings in private homes where Republican women could meet local candidates
