Why were men so dominant in the 1950's?

[cray]

A lot of that, IMO, was social engineering. Throughout US history, throughout most of world history, most wives didn't have the luxury of not doing plenty of work, whether on a family farm, or helping run a business in whatever village or city they lived in, married or widowed, didn't matter. Plenty of women worked during the 19th century & first half of the 20th century - factory workers were largely women. They were paid less than men, & children were paid less than men or women.

During World War 2, jobs that had been men-only had to be done by women, & I guess that let women know that they'd been unfairly blocked from certain careers & that they'd been paid less than men unfairly. When millions of men came home from the war, the government knew they'd all need work, and that something needed to be done to get women out of the old male jobs in the workplace.

I've read that a lot of the "Suzy Homemaker" kinds of advertisements in magazines, the ideal TV family type shows with a working dad and stay at home mom, and other media pressures were used intentionally to encourage women to quit the workplace & stay at home with kids. Women were often turned down for jobs because "men needed to raise families," even if the women were war widows & had kids to raise themselves. They were told that they could always get married again & be supported, but men had to work no matter what.

The emphasis on the man being the boss was part of this, & telling women they should be totally happy being at home all day with kids & kitchens was probably the first time in history that model was stressed. In the US, at least, it was sometimes possible, since the economy was good (all competing nations were crawling out from under their bombed out situation from the war years) and the middle class in the US grew larger.

What happened during the 1960s shows that the 50s family ideal wasn't normal, since the pressures of being a 'meal ticket' and having to prove their worth started giving men heart attacks, and the women being limited to housewife roles turned lots of them to Valium & demands for more rights & workplace equality. Men resented women marrying for money, and women resented men marrying for looks & then discarding wives when they got older & remarrying young thangs, and women resented having to rely on men for supporting them & their kids.

The pendulum always swings one way, then another, and only hits the more reasonable middle ground occasionally.