The Pill Thesis

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The Pill In order to understand the Sexual Revolution, one must be aware of the world in which it took place. The Great War had just ended and the United States was in a period of great economic boom. The baby boom generation was just being born and many married couples were looking to enjoy this time of new freedom and change. Not long after, the birth control pill came along. The pill would be a leading cause in the Sexual Revolution. During the 1960’s, at the height of the Sexual Revolution, the pill changed life for men and women in the United States because it led to a substantial decrease in unwanted pregnancies, a growth in the Feminist Movement, and gave way to greater sexual freedom. The Pill was made possible by the continuous…show more content…
Ernest Dichter saw women’s equality as inevitable, promoted not only by career opportunities but also by contraception” (62). This accelerated a change in the role of a woman without change of a man’s attitude toward her role. Within a short period of time employers started opening doors to women as workers and the number of working women jumped 10%. For the first time women were being hired as clerks on the NY Stock Exchange and one Midwest Publisher hiring women admitted, “ We never would have done this before the Pill” (Gibbs 7). Due to the fact that women could control when they had children, they could now finish college and have more consistent jobs. Feminists fought to broaden the opportunities that the Pill helped make possible and in 1972 Title IX was enacted, “ending discrimination in education, throwing open the doors of colleges, law schools, and med schools to women” (Gibbs 8). The assumption that if women were to be accepted into these schools they would just get pregnant and drop out was no longer a valid reason to reject female applicants as it was once before. Subsequently, the Feminist Movement not only brought more rights and opportunities to women it also caused an uprising in sexual freedom of women and the US
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