Can you rate the assumed quality of life for women, pre-women's rights/feminist movement, in the United States

Question

From 1-10 (1 being a human rights disaster of epic proportions, 10 being a virtually discomfort free utoptian society)

Answer 1

There are probably numbers out there that rate happiness, but answering this question alone wouldn't be very informative about the importance of feminism.  The quality of life in the U.S. in 1965 vs. 1975?  1908 vs. 2008?  You'd get very different answers, and there would be so many variable other than women's rights vs. no women's rights.

I think it would be more interesting to try to figure out how women's quality of life would change today if rights gained over the past 40 years were taken away.

Answer 2

I think it was probably a case-by-case basis.

I guess it depended on her living situation, relationship with her husband, health,..

It's really hard to say.

Answer 3

5?  

Answer 4

Why leave men out of the equation?

18th Century women: 6

18th Century men: 6

21st Century women: 5

21st Century men: 5

Life is never going to be 10/10 for anyone in anytime or place, but we have made so many advances that could make life more comfortable than in the 18th century I think we are making things much harder for ourselves than they have to be.

Answer 5

I'd say somewhere between 7 and 8

Women might not have the exact same equal rights and opportunity as men back then, but they do derived certain benefits from their assigned role in society and enjoyed special protections from men.

Answer 6

5. There were enough women who loved it, enough women who hated it, and enough women who didn't know or care to keep it even.

Answer 7

Why the United States?

The US is really an aberration in terms of women's rights movements, since the people protesting for them were recently settled, in a very new country, that had established itself on the basis of freedom from persecution and rights for ordinary people.  It had no monarchy or existing social order.  The women who had moved there represented the strongest, bravest and most courageous and adventurous of their former societies, since they had undertaken and sruvived the mammoth journey to the US and were, in many cases, living on tiny farms in the middle of no-where with no support systems, healthcare, etc.  I would argue, that the women's movement did not arise in the US, but was brought into the US by the women who emigrated there.  Moreover, attitudes to women were always more liberal and less formal and repressed than those of England and Europe, similarly Australian emigrants enjoyed much greater freedom and less restricted behaviour and often encouraged sisters and female friends back home to go over for the same reasons.  

If I had to give a rating of women's lives in the US before the beginnings of the women's rights movements, this would be mid 18th century, so I would say women's lives were about as hard as men's lives, with the added risks of childbirth, so quality of life was about 4/10 for men and 3/10 for women.  Prior to second wave feminism in the 60s and 70s, I'd say women's quality of life was around 6-7/10 and men's around 8-9/10  :-)

Answer 8

I don't think it can be rated.

But barter town definitely gets a 10.

Answer 9

Depends on whether your a flee bitten immigrant working in a murder factory and living in a ghetto or a southern bell/ upper class lay about  

Answer 10

My grandma would say, there were very few options for women, so whatever life brought you knew you had no choice but to accept it and make the best of it.  That would be first hand and not assumed.

Answer 11

I'd give it a 6.  I am personally of the opinion that a lot more women were happy with their lives than Betty Friedan & co made out.

Answer 12

8.