Domestic containment in 1960-1970 America

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Domestic containment is the main type of ideology that oppressed African-American women significantly between the 1960s and the 1970s (during the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement) in the United States. According to this ideology, a woman should be a mother, a housewife, and a servant of her husband. She does not have the rights to receive good education, to build up her own career, or to say no to her husband.

During the time of the Civil Rights Movement, many African-American women were blamed for being successful in their professions. These people argued that black women had had too much so that undermined black men’s dominant power of the community. Even black women themselves were deeply influenced by this ideology of domestic containment and so that felt extremely guilty for being successful. On the other hand, some researchers explained that this ideology had contained African-American women severely. They suggested that domestic containment is a kind of discrimination against black women. And they pointed out that the Civil Rights Movement would not be able help black women with their difficult situations in any real terms if the ideology of domestic containment was not corrected correctly in the whole community.

Later in the Black Power Movement, oppression on black women caused by the ideology of domestic containment seemed to be even more severe since the movement used this ideology of domestic containment as basis of their ideas. In other words, there was no actual improvement in black women's social status; instead, they still remained at the bottom of the society. Therefore, the ideology of domestic containment continued to influence African-American women negatively by the end of the 1970s.

The books listed below might be helpfyl for further detailed study of how domestic containment oppressed African-American women in the 1960s and the 1970s:

1. Michele Wallace, the Myth of the Superwomen, London/New York, Verso, 1979

2. Sara Evans, Personal Politics, New York, Vintage Books, 1979

3. Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi, New York, Bantam Dell, 1968

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