Isn't feminism and the women's liberation movement what caused women to stop becoming stay-at-home mothers and enter the workforce instead?

Feminism and women's liberation resulted in the waterwheel and steam driven textile factories being majority staffed with women during the industrial revolution?

I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would. Otherwise we land at “feminism ruined America”.

I don't think feminism ruined America.

> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.

I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

My background knowledge: after WW2 ended, women were fired and replaced with men. The average age of marriage dropped, and the portion of women attending college descreased. Housewives were increasingly dissatisfied, which drew them to the second-wave feminist movement. This is why the book The Feminine Mystique sold well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique

> Betty Friedan was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein

It’s always a jew.

>I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

that would time well with being one generation removed from the one that lost 400k to war. the 60's would be when boomers would start entering the work force.

I'm sure some of the silent generation women also entered, but they wouldn't lead the bulk of the workforce shifting by the late 60's/70's.

> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.

That doesn't track the reality of the timeline of women in the workforce. Women temporarily worked during WW2, and after the war things returned to the previous status quo. Women weren't common in the workforce until the 1960s. It wasn't until 1967 that women's labor force participation broke 40%[1] but then it pretty quickly hit 50% by 1978.

"Women's liberation" is what brought women into the labor force. That doesn't mean it "ruined America", it just means the approach had flaws that need to be iterated on.

1: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

Cottage industries from at least the time of Queen Elizabeth did have women working though. It was just that there were no factories until the industrial revolution, so that industrial activity remained in the home "the cottage", for both husbands and wives.

Invention of dish washer, washing machine, supermarkets (A&P) where you can do all your shopping in one place, they freed up the women labor force. Then WW2, men went to war, women started filling in some of the roles.

I don't think any progress in women can be attributed to feminism. They still don't have any ownership of their own bodies (abortion, sex work), their bodies are controlled by 80+ year old white males running the govt.