General Discussion

Was reminding me recently that the era wasn't really all that much like TV portrays it. Yes, most women were housewives, but not all. Some of course had no choice about working. Beyond that, though, some women never got the memo that they weren't 'meant' to do some jobs. Others who had 'traditional' women's jobs cared not at all about the idea that women weren't supposed to have a career outside the home and worked because they wanted to.

Even with the housewives, few were docile slaves to domesticity. Entire communities would have fallen apart without their civic engagement that produced literally millions of woman-hours in volunteer work across the nation. Even in Victorian times, what civilized our towns and cities was women pushing for clean public spaces, helping the sick and poor, and bringing in + maintaining arts and culture. Men provided the money to back it all, but they were rarely the ones doing the nitty gritty work to make their communities better.

It was always women, even when they had little economic or political power of their own.