August 18, 2005
Careers for Girls.
Bradley's Almanac has some amazing pictures of the pieces of a 1966 board game for girls called "What Shall I Be?" (Via Jonah Goldberg.) There are six possible careers: teacher, nurse, actress, model, airline stewardess, and ballerina. Actually, that's I big improvement over what I heard about growing up. If you wanted to be a "career gal" — as opposed to a mother — your choices were: teacher, nurse, and secretary.
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14 comments:
I guess you could say that we lived under a kind of Sharia law in the 1960s.
My mom was one of six children -- 4 girls and 2 boys. All 4 girls became nurses.
That's funny. My grandmother was a nurse, my other grandmother was a ballet instructor, and my step-grandmother was a teacher.
The first thing I ever wanted to be was an apple-picker because I figured that they were the only people who got to ride bikes and carry ladders at the same time. I thought that that would be a lot of fun.
I'm older than you, Ann, but the same three options were available -- nurse, teacher, secretary -- though not as careers. Oh, no, they were holding patterns until marriage, and/or insurance against widowhood (divorce was not a consideration!)
What tha?!? You mean to say, Ann, you're NOT a ballerina? I'm shocked!
Thanks, John. I see it lists the career paths:
Law School - Statesman
Graduate School - Scientist
College - Athlete
Medical School - Doctor
Technical School - Engineer
Flight School - Astronaut
Funny that Law School didn't lead to being a lawyer!
You've got to admit the suggestions made to boys were far more likely to make them successful. Interesting that the usual policeman/fireman options are omitted. Nothing artistic and nonmasculine makes the list though. Clearly, both games are trying to shape young minds to gender stereotypes. The boy's game pushes the players toward a higher class level than the girl's game does though.
When my daughter was young, there were certain Disney movies that were off limits for her. And she pretty quickly knew why. If the female in the movie was passive, we didn't go. No Sleeping Beauty for her, waiting passively for Prince Charming to kiss her and wake her up.
But I have to say that over the years, Disney has gotten a lot better. Much more likely today for the girl to be an active heroine.
I would like to think that our efforts were successful. So far, she seems to believe that there is little that she can't do. Some of the military combat specialties due to strength limitations. Beyond that, probably nothing. Which is what I want.
There have long been women who didn't fit the mold. When I was in business school in the 1970s, I had one female prof who was proud that she was breaking into that male bastion. I never had the heart to tell her that my grandmother and a friend of hers broke in probably forty years earlier. She was a college professor teaching accounting through the 1930s and 1940s.
I agree that Disney movies have gotten a lot better -- Mulan, for instance, is miles away from Sleeping Beauty. A lot of them still end in marriage, but then, comedies have been ending in marriage since before the time of Shakespeare, so I guess Disney can't be faulted for that.
I'm in my mid-20's, and a lot of guys my age and younger expect more out of women professionally, to the point where we sometimes feel disappointed if a friend of ours wants to stay home with her child. Perhaps it was that my mother and aunt were both professionals with graduate degrees. Or might it be from watching Princess Leia kick so much butt?
I will suggest that it was really in the aftermath of WWII that these stereotypes were so reinforced, and that it was intentially done to get women out of the workforce and into marriage, freeing up jobs for returning GIs (and ultimately resulting in the Baby Boom).
Maybe because of the Great Depression, it seems like women working was really better accepted during my grandparents' generation than my parents' generation. I do know that two incomes during that time kept my father from seeing most of the privations that others experienced during that time.
Of course, the timing of Adam's Rib (1949) somewhat refutes my theory, though arguably Tracy was more my grandparents' generation, having been born in 1900 (they were born right before then). Hepburn, born in 1907, was actually between my grandparents' and my parents' generations.
My three-year old son recently announced that "only boys can be train engineers." This isn't terribly surprising, given the ubiquity and popularity of Thomas the Tank Engine among the pre-school set. At Tidmouth Station, where Thomas lives, there are approximately 1 "female" (named) engines for every 10 "male" engines. The vast majority of female characters are passenger cars that the railroad owner -- male, of course -- gives to the (male) engines as a reward for being Really Useful. How Really Annoying.
Kim,
Sounds very British to me... I know on the shortline in my area there are several female employees, including conductors and engineers.
I agree with Bruce. Everything I've come across that talks about this trend suggests that after WW2 there was a lot of pressure - more than there had every been previously - for women already in the workforce to leave the workforce, if their occupation was in a field in which they might be taking a job away from a man. In 1947 there were not a lot of men who wanted to be nurses.
It seems as if, in large part, the pressure on women to stay at home and/or work in "women's careers" is a by-product of affluence. In the 1980s there was a big reaction against feminism, perhaps because the country was starting to do well again economically.
Oh...I had forgotten about secretary when I was remembering the "So you want to be..." series of books found in my 1960s elementary school library. Well, at least we had three careers from which to choose.
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