Topic: “The way women lived in the 50’s and how it has changed until now”.

Introduction
It’s not a secret that human behaviour has changed greatly with the passing of time,
especially as society evolves and our way of living is modified.
Nonetheless, the biggest, most noticeable change goes, without a doubt, to women, whose
way of thinking and acting has changed enormously in a very short span of time.
Since the 1950’s, women from many places have risen against the oppression under which
they lived and denied male supremacy. During this essay, the way their lives changed in the
latest decades will be addressed, along with the causes and consequences of such.

-1: the way women lived at the time, social issues of international relevance
The 1950’s are known as a time of conformity, when, for the most part, both men and
women lived up to society’s expectations and tried their best to fit its roles.
As a consequence of war, people start having more and more children (“baby boom”), which
causes an exponential rise of world population and ends in many children whose mothers
have to take care of, abandoning their professional pursuit and staying at home while their
respective husbands work many hours a day.
This lead to a great increase of depression among women, whose lives seemed to be boring
and hopeless.

-The massification of media and how this affected people´s (specially women’s) lives.
Baby boomers, thanks to their great numbers, made a great effect on popular culture,for
instance the 1950’s are known as the golden age of television, though it was commonly
criticized because of its lack of racial and female representation (it’s estimated TV shows
portrayed 3 men per women on average).
Besides, it was known for its stereotypical way of showing women, only as ideal mothers and
housewives. This kind of representation was no good to the change of female’s image in the
eyes of society, because when media shows you a certain scheme of physical and
psychological characteristics, people try especially hard to comply with its expectations.

- Comparison (1950-2010)
As it was previously mentioned, a woman’s purpose in the 50’s was pleasing her husband,
feeding her children and being a fun and loyal companion.
As for today, females no longer care about conformity (at least not the same as before), they
are free to pursue their dreams in any way, are much more represented in the media and in
a more diverse way.
Of course, their freedoms are still fewer than men’s, but the progress made in the latest
decades does not go unnoticed.
It is now accepted for women to practice any kind of profession, marriage is not seen as an
obligation and, on average, females are happier than they were 60/70 years ago, since they
no longer feel such a great pressure to please anyone’s roles.

-Conclusion
In my opinion, women’s lives in the 1950’s were sad and plain, but as a woman I am proud
of society’s progress even though I think we haven’t accomplished everything we want yet.
I believe we should feel proud about our ancestors for fighting for the good of the next
generations.