Alice Gebura

The Personal is Political: Women's Work

Women's work had rigidly defined boundaries (housewife/mother, teacher, nurse, or secretary) until the Civil Rights Act passed and feminism emerged. While women had some power in the homemaking space, that work was denigrated by its association with second class citizens - i.e. women - and later because we needed to rebel against it to free ourselves from that prison. As someone who grew up in the bad old days, I want people to be aware of what those limitations felt like. At the same time we should celebrate what women created, before mass production and consumerism made their work irrelevant.