Up until 1920, women couldn't vote. Until 1974, married women couldn't get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband's professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the historical oppression of women and the gradual changes in their social and economic rights.
Rebecca Traister's quote emphasizes the significant transformations in women's rights over the decades, illustrating how women were historically denied basic rights such as voting and financial autonomy. It showcases the societal structures that often relegated women's identities to that of their husbands, underlining the importance of recognizing and addressing these inequities to foster true gender equality.
In practice
This quote can be used in a women's rights rally to emphasize the importance of continuing the fight for equality.
There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful, who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
There are all kinds of ways in which women, together, change the world. And I don't mean that in a cheesy way. I'm not somebody who believes all women should support each other. I believe very strongly in women critiquing each other, just not critiquing each other more intensely because they're women.
Plenty of the women who were single in the nineteenth century wrote about their desire to evade marriage. Marriage was scary in a lot of ways. It often involved having a lot of kids, losing your autonomy, being in service to a husband and children who were often born at an unremitting pace without the benefit of modern medicine.
More women than ever are having babies at the peak of their careers. When will we stop punishing them for it?
Being able to control your reproduction is essential to women's ability to flourish in the United States.
I'm learning the process of changing things. I'm not really sure where this is going to take me. But I know what I want before my career is over: I want people to remember me as someone other than a guy who just tackled people.
Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow; nothing can prevent it.
Feminism is not here to dictate to you. It’s not prescriptive, it’s not dogmatic. All we are here to do is give you a choice. If you want to run for President, you can. If you don’t, that’s wonderful, too. I’m lucky I was raised to believe that my opinion at the dinner table was valuable. My mum and I spoke as loudly as my brothers.
They ask me if I'm going to quit. I thought we were just getting started. We have a revolution to fight, a country to change.
Thankfully dreams can change. If we'd all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses. So whatever your dream is right now, if you don't achieve it, you haven't failed and you're not some loser-but just as importantly-if you do get your dream, you're not a winner.
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