When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present

[When Everything Changed] by [[Gail Collins]] is a history of the women’s movement and of women’s place in the US. It’s well-written and full of interesting details. Collins covers issues of class, race and sexual orientation as they relate to women’s roles, so the book is quite comprehensive. It’s broad, rather than deep, but well worth reading.

I was impressed at how far we have come since the early 60’s when women were marginalized and accepted the marginalization. The story that resonated with me was an anecdote about JFK. Katharine Graham told how the president wanted to know why Adlai Stevenson, balding and chubby, was regarded as so attractive by his many female friends. Told that it was because Stevenson actually show more listened with interest to what women had to say, the president responded “Well, I don’t say you’re wrong, but I’m not sure I can go to those lengths. “ show less

This book is a modern history of women in the United States from 1960 through the 2008 US Presidential campaign. Gail Collins, the first woman to serve as editor of the New York Times editorial page, begins with a detailed review of the role of women, and societal attitudes towards women, in 1960. There were virtually no women doctors or lawyers. Television had taken the nation by storm, with 90% of American families owning a TV, and most programs portrayed the men in lead roles and women as subservient. Housework was very time-consuming, with labor-saving devices only just beginning to enter homes. Most women did not feel poorly treated; it was just the way things were. Surprisingly (at least to me), the civil rights movement was a show more trigger event that set waves of change in motion. Collins takes the reader decade by decade up to the present time, showing how women gradually earned rights, both legally and informally, and celebrated the early pioneers who made it all possible.

The book effectively covers my entire life (I was born in 1962). And while I had some idea that we’d “come a long way baby,” (as the ad used to say), I didn’t realize how much radical change had occurred until reading this book. I also found it very interesting to reflect on my personal experience during each decade. In that regard, the most meaningful chapters were those covering the 1980s and early 1990s: the time in which I came of age, went to university, got married, started a career, and had a family. But the chapters covering the 1960s and 1970s were compelling, because they put into perspective events that were somewhat of a mystery when seen through a child’s eyes (Roe vs. Wade is one notable example).

I recommend this book for all American women who would like to better understand the key people and events that shaped the society in which we live today. show less

A fascinating book, and a good reminder of how far we've come - and how quickly - for whenever the distance we have yet to go starts to feel overwhelming. Oddly, I feel as though I came away from this book with a better understanding of my mom's (somewhat fraught) relationship with her mother. Highly recommended, easy to read in fits and starts due to the episodic and anecdotal arrangement of the chapters.

So much of this has happened in my lifetime. I can remember going to buy my first (used) car on my own in 1985, and the salesman asking me if my daddy was going to co-sign the loan for me. There I stood, college degree in one hand and downpayment I had earned in the other, and was being asked if my daddy was going to stand for me. Things have come very far, very fast. However, it's sad and scary the movie '9-5' could be remade today with updated fashions and little if no other changes to the script and still be right on the mark regarding women in the workplace. An upside is what Title IX has done for women in high schools and colleges regarding athletics. Collins provides terrific detail, great personal stories from women who fought show more the good fight, and provides thought-provoking parallels to the Civil Rigths movement; insight on the rise of the New Right; and how Sarah Palin is basically a Phyllis Schafly retread. show less

Gail Collins is one of the most consistently thoughtful and entertaining op-ed columnists at the New York Times, and she brings those qualities, along with an impressive amount of research, to the story of the women's movement from 1960 until the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. I was born in 1964, a few months after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which included an amendment prohibiting discrimination on the basis of a person's sex. Although I had lived through much of the history covered in Collins' book, I found that I really knew very little of it. I knew about Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, of course, but I new nothing about many of the "ordinary" women whose persistence and courage helped to bring about show more such remarkable change in American society over the past half century—women like Lorena Weeks, the plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit against her employer, Southern Bell, that struck a major blow against sex discrimination in the workplace. Nor did I know about the bill, cosponsored by Walter Mondale in the early 1970s, that would have provided universal free or subsidized childcare for American workers. The bill passed both the House and Senate with bipartisan support, only to be vetoed by President Nixon at the urging of conservative staffers led by Pat Buchanan, who feared the bill would lead to "the Sovietization of American children." Collins is a lively writer, and her combination of archival research and oral history presents a colorful picture of the period. When Everything Changed is a fast, captivating, and often inspiring read.

Note: One of the lesser-known heroines of Collins' book is the late Republican state Assemblywoman from New York, Constance Cook, who introduced the first state law legalizing abortion, in 1970. The law became the model for the decision in Roe v. Wade. Constance Cook represented Ithaca, New York, and was a familiar name when I was growing up in her district in the 1970s. show less

American society has changed at an amazing pace in the last fifty years, especially for women. In 1960, when Gail Collins begins the narrative of When Everything Changed, most white, middle-class women were married, stay-at-home mothers well before their thirtieth birthdays; they may have worked before they married, but their choices of acceptable careers were limited - sometimes by convention, sometimes by actual barriers to entry, including the law. It was more expected for poor women to work, even if they had children, but they were still primarily responsible for family and housekeeping as well. While the suffragists had succeeded in winning women the right to vote in 1920, progress for women in society essentially stalled after show more that. When it was proposed that non-discrimination on the basis of gender, as well as race, be added to the Civil Rights Act, it was essentially a joke aimed at derailing the law's passage in the first place.

The Civil Rights Act passed anyway, and together with Title IX, the legal framework was put in place for women's rights and opportunities to expand dramatically. And with that framework, women's consciousness began to expand too, and they began to question and reshape the social framework as well...ultimately, by the early 21st century, bending some of it back toward where it started.

It's rather difficult to review this book fully, because it includes so much material. However, it's a relatively fast and very engaging read (if I'd had more time to spend with it, I'd have finished it sooner). There are some topics and people on which I'd have liked to spend more time, but I don't think Collins missed or shortchanged anything that really matters. The book was enlightening about so many things: the women in the civil-rights movement (whom the men wanted to keep in the background); the early triumph and ultimate defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, and its role in the rise of modern-day conservative politics (by the way, did you know that around the same time Congress originally passed the ERA, they also approved national child-care legislation? I didn't know it; if that had sustained some momentum, the lives of working moms could be so different); the perception of women as portrayed in popular culture, from That Girl to Mary Tyler Moore to Clair Huxtable, and reflected back as role models. Collins' approach embodies the "personal is political" tenet of modern feminism; much of the story here is oral history, told through women's experiences. While she spends time on plenty of prominent women - Gloria Steinem, Sandra Day O'Connor, Hillary Clinton - the stories of little-known women who also spent time in the trenches and lived out the changes are equally important here.

Collins is a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, and brings her journalist's approach to the writing here - it's very straightforward and direct, with plenty of references and endnotes. I read this on my Kindle, where the endnotes are actually links - it's a much more efficient approach, and I definitely liked it better than flipping back to the end all the time. show less

I enjoy Gail Collins' writing and particularly enjoyed this book for its comprehensive review of the women's movement from 1960 on. I was born in the late 40's and came of age in the 60's. As a man I could see many societal changes. It is as if my brother, who was born in the early 40's and came of age in the 50's, and I saw the world from completely different viewpoints.

But the changes for men were nothing like the changes for women and it is good to be reminded of that and of how far there is still to go on the path to equality.