The 1970s Was The Most Fabulous Time To Be a Woman
Women in the 1970s reported the highest rates of happiness. The Gen X kids know why.
Ask any woman born in the 1970s and she will tell you it was the grooviest time to be alive. Americans preached peace and love while going to war, and feminists burnt bras while never actually burning any bras.
Income instability was at an all-time high—five times higher than in the 1990s.¹ Unfortunately, women had little discretionary income, mostly because gas prices and gas-guzzling station wagons gobbled up weekly paychecks.
Single ladies better not expect to charge that gas. Women couldn’t get a credit card until 1974. Sure, you could marry a rich man in polyester pants, but you better not deny him sex. Until the end of the 1970s, “head and master” laws defined rape as forcible intercourse with a woman other than a man’s wife.
Many women began to push back. Divorce rates doubled between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s.²
Unfortunately, once you were divorced, you needed a job. No worries. In the 1970s, newspapers separated the classified section into “jobs for women” and “jobs for men.” (Hint: the ones for women paid a heck of a lot less.)
