by Olha Romaniuk

Created on: June 01, 2009

It seems that not too long ago, women's career choices were limited to a small number of options. To be a seamstress or an elementary school teacher? Oh, the joys of juggling work and home life seemed unattainable until recently, where women are just as responsible for bringing home the bacon as men are. Sure, it is often harder being a woman and the constant juggle of family and career is a daily reality for millions of women in this country and all over the world. Nonetheless, women are choosing the freedoms that come with financial security over staying at home, because the rewards, by far, outweight the challenges.

It is not until the early 1940's and the second world war that we begin to see women stepping out into the work force, out of the country's pure necessity for working hands. While men were being whisked away by a call of duty to fight in the war, women had to step in and fill the void created by the newly-vacated jobs. It seemed to be a logical step to take for each woman in the country - those who were able and willing to go to work. A lot of women were eager to see the new opportunity as a positive step forward. Many women took up demanding, labor-intensive jobs, proving to the skeptics and the doubters that they were capable of having a real job and maintaining a healthy family at the same time.

Of course, even in those times of urgency, women were still looked down upon as the lesser counterparts to the men who held the same jobs and used the same set of skills to complete those jobs. For example, looking at the average salary for a teaching position in 1939 - it becomes evident that a man was earning a significant amount more than a woman. An average salary of a male teacher was $1,953, while that of a female teacher was only $1,394.

Additionally, the push of women into the working force slowed down significantly after the war was over. With all the men coming back from the battle zone, many women had to go back to their traditional roles of homemakers, while the men assumed the jobs they held prior to the commencement of the war. Indeed, in the 1950's, a traditional model of an American family became the only acceptable standard of the white, middle-class society - the men assumed their roles as the breadwinners, and the women were largely pushed into the background roles of homemakers and caretakers.

The 1960's saw an increased unrest in all aspects of discriminatory practices very much prevalent all over the United States during

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