This seemingly simple story could describe the experiences of any number of women who were born in the 1950s, who were raised to see being married as the ultimate goal of their lives, having children their purpose, and witnessing from early on how boys would be favored above them.

She needed to find a woman who had given her everything for her nation, but who also maintained patriarchal ideals of womanhood—birthing children, tending to the clothes, nursing men through their sicknesses, pleasing her husband whenever he wanted to be pleased—as evidence that women should be able to vote, but emphasizing that this right should

A white girl with certain privileges learns that although she is seen as being worthy of protection and holding importance as a future wife and mother, she is supposed to be content with this and never ask for more. Her ambition in life is supported so long as it contributes to the ultimate goal of marriage and mothering. She is not in any explicit

The first step in dismantling American patriarchy is a realization that what we are told is simply a story passed to us by those with power who aim to keep their power.

starting in the 1950s, sex was viewed more than ever before as a key component of a happy marriage to keep the nuclear family together and husbands away from infidelity. Married women were tasked with holding “the state of the nation’s morality and culture” through keeping their husbands happy in bed, as Miriam Reumann, the author of American

Even women who were single and going against the grain would themselves tell young girls they would be lucky to marry someday, knowing how difficult it was to live, make money, and have your basic needs met without a male partner. The treatment of their male siblings and peers would stand in contrast to them, signaling that boys had choices that

Women were often chiefs and warriors; in many tribes people were what is now termed “two-spirit,” not fitting into categories of boy and girl and regarded as holy people, mediators, and healers. Among many other traditions that varied from tribe to tribe, such possibilities for women and nonbinary people were not accepted by their colonizers.