The following list is of NINE things a woman couldn't do in 1971 - yes the date is correct, 1971.
The following list is of NINE things a woman couldn’t do in 1971 – yes the date is correct, 1971.
In 1971 a woman could not:
1. Get a Credit Card in her own name – it wasn’t until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband’s signature.
2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant – that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of *1978*!
3. Serve on a jury - It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn't until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states.
4. Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff.
5. Get an Ivy League education - Yale and Princeton didn't accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn't admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women's college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively.
Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but, by and large, women in the '60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold.
6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977!
7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to – spousal rape wasn’t criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again...1993.
8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn’t outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don’t mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010.
9.The birth control pill: Issues like reproductive freedom and a woman's right to decide when and whether to have children were only just beginning to be openly discussed in the 1960s. In 1957, the FDA approved of the birth control pill but only for "severe menstrual distress." In 1960, the pill was approved for use as a contraceptive. Even so, the pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. Some of those opposed said oral contraceptives were "immoral, promoted prostitution and were tantamount to abortion." It wasn't until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status. In short, birth control meant a woman could complete her education, enter the work force and plan her own life.
Oh, and one more thing, prior to 1880 which is just a few years before the photo of this very proud lady was taken, the age of consent for sex was set at 10 or 12 in more states, with the exception of our neighbor Delaware – where it was 7 YEARS OLD!
Feminism is NOT just for other women.
KNOW your HERstory.
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We've come a long way babies!!! 
made my day. Seriously perfect, taking it down a layer.
Might be an appealing thought line because my own “othering” of them has become a bit of a trigger and this tickles the funny bone. Their jaw dropping lack of ethics warrants all the colorful characterizations we can heap on them. Maybe one or two will stick with voters. Drive the knuckle draggers back to their caves.
we're going backwards. 
The Trump Administration Is Trying to Make It Easier to Fire Unmarried Pregnant Women
A new rule from the Department of Labor uses the guise of religious beliefs to allow discrimination.
The Department of Labor proposed a new rule this week that would make it easier for employers to discriminate against workers who they say violate their religious beliefs, including members of the LGBTQ community, pregnant women who are not married, and others.
The proposed rule, published Thursday in the Federal Register, purports to “clarify the scope and application of the religious exemption” in the Equal Opportunity Clause, making it easier for employers who contract with the federal government to claim religious exemptions in their hiring and firing decisions.
The ACLU says that the rule would persecute marginalized workers under the guise of religious freedom.
more...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/trump-administration-rule-religious-belief-discrimination-lgbtq-unmarried-pregnant/
After a couple scares we found through the grape vine a totally cool Doc who was happy to prescribe and I only paid like 20 dollars. The pills themselves were plenty cheap too and even at my $6.00 an hour job this whole situation was a bargain. Now look at what we got going on in health care. 
Well do I remember the dress code for public schools being completely eliminated in Palm Beach County in '72 thanks to a lawsuit. A super great young attorney who was a chaperon on a trip to Europe our church put together for its' teens brought the suit. They had suspended a boy for refusing to get a haircut and that was the test case needed. Settled out of court too as the school board was advised they would never prevail and for a good while after that we could wear cutoffs and flip flops to school if we wished.
The rules did tighten up a little after about a year or so for safety considerations. Little things like not wearing KKK apparel and requiring actual shoes to be worn so one's foot didn't get cut off in shop class but things were never the same for school administrations afterward. It was becoming recognized across the country that even teens and young people under 21 actually had rights. Before long 18 yr old people could vote and drink alcohol besides just being cannon fodder compelled to fight and kill people in foreign wars for the profit of the MIC.
Got carried away here. Sorry to rant but these were exciting times and the country was heading in a better direction for the most part. Too bad it didn't last.
DH once worked with a female recruiting supervisor to find a new employment opportunity. This woman had a very young and attractive account manager to whom he was to report the "results" of his interview(s). While discussing resumes after one such post-interview meeting, the account manager revealed to DH that her supervisor, the "recruiter," had hired the account manager after luring her away from her previous position by offering a much larger salary working for her. What was that account manager's previous position??? The account manager was the supervisor's previous nanny to her and her husband's children! The young lady had had no other "job" experience in the business world. Now just why would anyone relinquish a wonderful nanny and offer the chid-minder who was "working on her degree in Early Childhood Education," not Business Admin, such a "better" opportunity with a much larger salary to mind job candidates in IT. If you use your imagination, and, granted, nothing can be proven on a hunch, but there's a very likely explanation...LOL!
That said, with regard to "acceptable grounds for dismissal," in my state employers don't need a reason to "let go" of anyone they want, and they don't need a reason. The burden of proof is on the fired/laid off employee re litigation should one decide to pursue that. One can appeal not receiving unemployment benefits but that's about it as far as restoring one's salary and/or position. Violations of legislation designed for protection of the employee or their preferential status may only be in force for federal "civil service" situations as well. Though, of course, litigation has been pursued against corporate employers, even successfully in a few cases, it's an unlikely pursuit and/or win for the employee so removed from the payroll for non-performance and/or "just cause" issues. Businesses may get fined, but there's little interest in establishing a case for justice to the individual victims of the corporate violation. 
and the bank would not let her on the mortgage for a house, or buy a car without my signature. The Citadel (military college of SC) had a huge fight over admitting women. Clubs (like the Country Club and Yacht Club) only put memberships in the man's name.
My mother taught college math for 25 years in SC, and she constantly raised hell with banks, stores, etc. Her favorite was to find out the CEO or President's phone and call them and demand equal treatment. Not bad for someone born in 1930.
The 18 year old vote, Title IX, and the almost passed ERA all combined to help move the needle.
If every other President was a woman, we would have less wars, less spent on the MI complex, better schools, better health care, and guns would no away.
Sounds like you had a rough time. 
I've known women who had husbands that did things like that to the women I knew, and that was recently.
I think she said she had a Wanamaker's card in her own name in the mid-50s when she was working but after marrying, all the cards were in my father's name. And when he died in '74, her efforts to get their cards changed to be in her name were unsuccessful outside of one that I think was an Exxon card (which a year or so earlier had been updated when Esso was renamed to Exxon), where they only conceded to update the account to be "Mrs. <husband's name>" (not using her own first name with her marriage name but acknowledging her as the "wife/widow" ). The rest of the accounts for credit cards were closed. 
I think one of the first ones to give her one in her own (marriage) name after all that was Talbot's and later Abraham & Strauss.
But to add another to the list - women needed their husband's consent to have a hysterectomy in '71 and just after (another my mom was impacted by and ranted about).
I agree that the young women today have no idea.... That was what prompted Gloria Steinem to create Ms. magazine and we certainly had a subscription in our household!
