Dear Editor,
From the late nineteenth century until now, women have come from working at home to working in almost every job imaginable.
Since the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the first independent women’s movement, women are standing out in the forefront along with men. From the time when women were working, raising children, taking care of the home and helping raise vegetables and beef on the farm to put food on the table, women have been partial breadwinners. The 21st century is no exception, even for the few men who do not want their wives to work. Hard times find them trying to find work outside the home to make ends meet.
If it was OK for women to fill in for men while World War II was going on, then why would the government allow their wages to be cut after the war was over?
Female reformers were at the forefront in the movement for equal wages and won minimum wage and maximum hours laws for women. The Women’s Bureau in the federal department of labor was formed.
In the traditional family, the man dominates the family and usually controls the decision-making. Women’s duties are confined to bringing up the children and running the house. There was no premarital sex and adultery was a forgivable sin for men but not women. The only outside jobs suitable for a woman were saleswoman or schoolteacher or were related to household duties.
There is no clear relationship between family type and a woman’s ability to work. Women head more families in the 1990s than ever before. Women have careers, raise families and carry on successful and fulfilling lives more than ever in history.
Margaret Tugman

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