When Everything Changed

 

My personal history depicted in buttons. 

Gail Collins' new social and political history, "When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present," is not just an eminently readable book, it's a page-turner — and the perfect choice for International Women's Day (March 8). Though Collins doesn't appear to have left anyone or anything out — and has packed the volume with quotes and stats — the book is both fast-paced and entertaining. Having come of age during much of the history Collins writes about — and even having participated in some of the events — I still found plenty to surprise and inform to me. 

What makes "When Everything Changed" such an enthralling read is that Collins tells the larger story by relating the stories of a wide group of individual women of the era — along with the responses of their mothers and daughters to their actions. Some of the names are familiar like Gloria Steinem or Madeleine Kunin, but others — whose names are less-well known — have achieved just as much in their spheres as these movement icons. Their stories, in fact, are more moving for being unknown.

Even if you are old enough to remember what life for women was like as it is described in the pages of this book, there are times when you feel like these stories and situations have to be some kind of joke, they are so absurd. Others are just plain infuriating. Some examples:

In 1974 Kathryn Kirschbaum, the mayor of Davenport, Iowa, could not get a Bank of America card unless she got her husband's signature. Even Billie Jean King — who won three Winbleton titles in a single year and was supporting her household with those earnings — could not get a credit card unless it was in the name of her husband, a law student with no income.

The New York Times eliminated gender in the paper's help-wanted ads in December, 1968. But it took until 2001 for the book's author, Gail Collins, to be named the first female editorial page editor of the Times.

The sum total of women's athletic scholarships for the entire nation in 1972 was $100,000. (Thanks to Title IX, by 1984 there were ten thousand athletic scholarships for women and thirty different national women's collelgiate championships, compared to none in 1970.)

There's lots of politics, personalities and legislative wrangling here, but Collins has leavened the serious with the silly. The sections on hair (white or Black), mini-skirts, going bra-less, shaving/not-shaving/shaving again, and, of course, high heels are all a hoot — and spot-on. (I loved no longer suffering the agony of curling my hair every night and sleeping on rollers, going bra-less and wearing tights with no more garter belts and girdles; the freedom was heavenly! Not to dismiss the serious aims of the movement, but those transformations have been just as long lasting and influential among the women I know, as any of the legal decisions).

While the changes enumerated in Collins' book, prove beyond a doubt that we've come a long way, the book also emphasizes our discovery that you can't have it all. We have finally had women in legitimate competition for the nation's highest elected office, but we failed to get the kind of government support for universal daycare that other industrialized nations have. That's the missing element that makes it possible for women to have both jobs and families without either being neglected. Whether you find "When Everything Changed" a satisfying or a sobering read, will likely depend on whether you see the journey Collins' chronicles as at an end or still in progress.    

Comments

[Kate]

Nice buttons!

[Gail]

The journey is continuing~ This looks like a great read~ Thanks Linda for the review. Love the buttons! Gail

[Altoon]

Thanks for the wonderful post, reminding us of our journey over the past 40 odd years. I remember the excitement of reading the feminist literature of the 60s and 70s, and the eye opening experience of de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

ps: I wrote this comment yesterday, it appeared on the blog, then disappeared, so here it is again.