by Gail Collins
First published 2009
Gail Collins examines the dramatic transformation of American women's lives from 1960 to 2008. She opens with a society where wives needed their husbands' permission to obtain credit cards and concludes with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Collins combines oral history with detailed research to document changes across politics, economics, work, family life, and popular culture. She traces major milestones like the birth control pill's introduction, the elimination of gender-segregated job advertisements, and the removal of quotas limiting women in medical and law schools. The book features testimonies from history makers alongside ordinary women navigating changing times. Collins covers everything from television shows like Father Knows Best to daily weigh-ins required for flight attendants, from the scarcity of female professors to women's exclusion from the Boston Marathon and police forces. The narrative reveals how four centuries of expectations about women's roles collapsed within a single generation. Collins presents this sweeping change through her characteristic straightforward and entertaining style, offering both older readers a reminder of how different their world once was and younger readers fresh insight into their recent past.
Genres: history, 20th-century, gender-studies, non-fiction, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: social-commentary
Setting: America, United States
Period: 1960s, 2000s
480 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company