ABSTRACT
It seems to be widely believed that the social status of women stagnated or even declined in the late 1940s and 1950s. Women's jobs were almost always regarded as less important than their husbands. It was still relatively easy for many employers to get away with paying women less than men for doing the same work, although this was seen as a dirty trick even then. Generalizing about society's attitudes toward sex, much less people's actual behaviour is an uncertain business, although some have found it highly profitable. The usually intelligent David Halberstam, in describing the arts and sexual matters, actually seems to think that the mores of American society in 1950 were hardly different from what they were in the Victorian Age. The Great Depression had largely, interrupted a long-term trend of gradual increase in the number of women working outside the home, although before World War II the majority of working women were young and single.
