WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED, THE AMAZING JOURNEY OF AMERICAN WOMEN FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT by Gail Collins

Thank-you Valerie
Hachette Book Group

Hardcover: 480 pages

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316059544

Synopsis:

"Gail Collins's When Everything Changed points out what the women on "Mad Men" know: that period in our history was less enjoyable for the ladies.... The early pages of Ms. Collins's book are peppered with accounts of incidents so outrageous they almost seem like jokes....but Ms. Collins underlines the serious consequences of such risible moments by including the stories of individual women-from overworked housewives to marginalized politicians-whose lives were cramped and deformed by the culture's low opinion of their capabilities.... Ms. Collins reminds us of how many aspects of our lives were affected by the battles these women fought. And even readers who lived through this era may be surprised to discover how much they never knew, or have forgotten...Among the impressive features of Ms. Collins's book is her genial, fair-minded sympathy, her refusal to smirk at the excesses of the most radical '70s feminists or at the stance of women, among them Phyllis Schlafly, who counseled their sisters to stay home where they belonged. This evenhandedness seems all the more admirable later in the book, when she considers the significance of Hillary Rodham Clinton's and Sarah Palin's roles in the 2008 presidential election."

My thoughts:

I arrived in the United States in August of 1966 in the middle of the worst airline strike (I was 7 month pregnant and needed to arrive in California before the deadline which forbid women to fly pregnant after 7 month). I was unaware or naive to many of women's limitations at my arrival. My husband, an American citizen changed this for me quickly. He became a man I did not know as soon as we landed at JFK by threatening me not to speak, lest I should embarrass him  (I had a rather strong French accent), and a list  of things "women do not do in my country... I remember this as being very hard on me. Basically, I had to obey my husband from now on after a life of freedom in my country as a woman.  I eventually divorced this man in 1972.

Gail Collins, book "WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED..." was a real wake-up call to what had happened to me so long ago and finally made so much sense. I remember everything mentioned in this great book. I became a feminist and was liberated from some awful male abuse. Betty Friedan's book "THE FEMININE MYSTIC " mentions:

"The feminin mystic has succeeded in burying milions of American women alive. There is no way for these women to break out of their comfortable concentration camps except by finally put forth an effort        that human effort which reaches beyond biology, beyond the narrow walls of home        , to help shape the future."

This statement by Betty Friedan might sound radical today, when women have so many more choices as mothers and in the workplace, even so, we women still have a ways to go. I remember being smothered into a life which was expected of me as a mother and woman and reinforced by men, be it a husband, boss, doctors etc...Personally I believe my 3 boys did not profit from this confinement their mother was expected to live in. I noticed how much happier they where when I broke those rules, dated, traveled et... and had a babysitter to watch them.

"WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED..." needs to be a must read by young women and men,   learn their mother's history, understand that not so long ago life wasn't easy for those mothers, and women in general.  Men should read it to learn from it and perhaps be surprised at the disrespect we women received. Yet for whatever reason there is a feeling in me that men still have a ways to go. If women do not stand up and continue to stand up for our rights we will stay where we are today. Throughout the book the disrespect women in the '60, '70, 80, '90 where subjected to is shocking...and I know it is still going on today, if more discretely, after all women have recourse to Sexual Harassment laws today, which in my days in 1966 did not exist at all.

I would like to see this book as a must read be it in High school or College level