When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
Gail Collins, 2009
Little, Brown & Co.
471 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316014045
Summary
Picking up where her previous successful and highly lauded book America's Women left off, Gail Collins recounts the sea change women have experienced since 1960. A comprehen-sive mix of oral history and Collins's keen research, this is the definitive book about five crucial decades of progress, told with the down-to-earth, amusing, and agenda-free tone this beloved New York Times columnist is known for. The interviews with women who have lived through these transformative years include an advertising executive in the 60s who was not allowed to attend board meetings that took place in the all-male dining room; and an airline stewardess who remembered being required to bend over to light her passengers' cigars on the men-only 'Executive Flight' from New York to Chicago.
We, too, may have forgotten the enormous strides made by women since 1960—and the rare setbacks. "Hell yes, we have a quota [7%]" said a medical school dean in 1961. "We do keep women out, when we can." At a pre-graduation party at BarnardCollege, "they handed corsages to the girls who were engaged and lemons to those who weren't." In 1960, two-thirds of women 18-60 surveyed by Gallup didn't approve of the idea of a female president. Until 1972, no woman ran in the Boston Marathon, the year when Title IX passed, requiring parity for boys and girls in school athletic programs (and also the year after Nixon vetoed the childcare legislation passed by congress).
What happened during the past fifty years—a period that led to the first woman's winning a Presidential Primary—and why? The cataclysmic change in the lives of American women is a story Gail Collins seems to have been born totell. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 25, 1945
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Marquette University; M.A., University of
Massachusetts
Gail Collins was the editorial page editor of the New York Times from 2001 to January 1, 2007. She was the first female Editorial Page Editor at the Times. Prior to that, she was an editorial board member and an op-ed columnist. In January 2007 Collins stepped down as Editor to write a book; she returned to the Times to reprise her role as columnist six months later. Her column presently runs every Thursday and Saturday and usually covers contemporary American politics and other current events in a humorous or satirical light.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Gail Gleason, Collins has a degree in journalism from Marquette University and an M.A. in government from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to the New York Times, Collins wrote for the New York Daily News, Newsday, Connecticut Business Journal, United Press International, and the Associated Press in New York City.
Collins also founded the Connecticut State News Bureau which operated from 1972 to 1977 and provided coverage of the state capital and Connecticut politics. When it was sold, the company served more than thirty weekly and daily newspaper clients.
Beyond her work as a journalist, Collins has published several books; Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics; America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines; The Millennium Book which she co-authored with her husband, CBS News producer Dan Collins; and most recently When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.
She also has been a journalism instructor at Southern Connecticut State University. (From Wikipedia.)
Critics Say . . .
Did feminism fail? Gail Collins's smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable account of women's recent history in America not only answers this question brilliantly, but also poses new ones about the past and the present, as she explicates moments that were widely recorded and illuminates scenes that were barely remarked upon at the time.
Amy Bloom - New York Times Book Review
'The past is a foreign country' is the kind of hallowed quotation that's resolutely opaque until you stumble on something that drives home its emotional truth. The uncanny feeling it references is one that recurs frequently as you read When Everything Changed, the absorbing history of feminism and American women's lives by Gail Collins, the resident editorial fount of wry Midwestern common sense at the New York Times.... Ho-hum, you think-been there, done that, or Mom told me about it, and at rather tiresome length. Except that what Collins does, which so pitiably few pop-history writers do, is bring the stories, the anecdotes that come to life and pull you in.
Ben Dickinson - Elle
You've come a long way, baby: that's Collins's conclusion about American women, who once lacked the right to publicly wear pants and now take their place on the presidential campaign trail and the battlefield. New York Times columnist Collins attempts a comprehensive account of the last 50 years of women's history in this sequel to America's Women, primarily focusing on the 1960s. Giving relatively short shrift to the current generation of young women, Collins centers the bulk of her attention on the baby boom generation (to which she belongs) and leaders like NOW founder Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, as well as dozens of ordinary struggling women. The book's stronger parts include highlighting pioneers like Congresswoman Martha Griffiths, who began her political career in the 1940s and stories of laughably shortsighted sexism against Sandra Day O'Connor. Collins captures the conundrums of feminism's success (does a see-through blouse make a woman liberated or a sex object?), but the book will probably resonate most for her generational peers.
Publishers Weekly
The impressive sequel to America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (2003). Collins-the first-ever female editor of the New York Times, and currently an op-ed contributor-offers an enormously entertaining cultural and social history. Her extensive research weaves the compelling stories of more than 100 women, ranging in age from 20 to 80, into a larger narrative of politics, economics and sexual mores. The author chronicles the story of the National Organization for Women (NOW), the women's-liberation movement and its forerunner, the civil-rights movement, the failed struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment and the impact of Roe v. Wade and Title IX. She populates her account with dozens of well- and lesser-known female leaders, including Sherri Finkbine, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Alice Paul, Margaret Chase Smith, Phyllis Schlafly, Helen Gurley Brown and Billy Jean King. Collins paints a vivid picture of the world as it was, and as it has so radically altered life for American girls and women. Fashions, hairstyles, dating, birth control-all are grist for her mill. Without preaching, she shows the sexism that women (and men) once accepted as the norm, and she backs up her often eye-opening stories with hard facts and solid statistics. From the opening anecdote of a woman expelled from traffic court in 1960 for appearing in slacks, to the closing one of a woman fired from her job as a bus driver in 2007 for refusing to wear slacks, this an engrossing account of how not just the daily lives, but the assumptions and expectations of women have changed so much in so short a time. Collins can be deadly serious and great fun to read at the same time. A revelatory book for readers of both sexes, and sure to become required reading for any American women's-studies course.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for When Everything Changed:
1. Point out some of the most egregious episodes that Collins recounts of female discrimination in the 1960's. What was most surprising to you...or most infuriating?
2. What led to—or precipitated—that moment in time "when everything changed"? Was there a single event or an accumulation of events? How do we account for it?
3. Talk about women's fashions and the degree to which they have reflected changing attitudes toward women's role in culture? What statement does today's fashion make about women?
4. What role has birth control played in the feminist movement?
5. Where does Collins see failures in feminism's ability to achieve change? Do you agree with her assessment?
6. Talk about the overall impact on society-at-large that has come about through the gains in female equality. In your opinion, what is beneficial...and what is problematic?
6. Discuss some of the follow-up interviews and epilogues at the end of the book. Which strike you most? Which do you find most enlightening?
7. In terms of freedom of opportunity, how does your life differ from your grandmother's or mother's life...or your daughter's (-in-law) life? Looking ahead, what do you see as the future of feminism?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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