The new way in which white Americans regarded racial minorities was matched in the seventies by a dramatic change in attitudes toward women, and by women, about social roles based on gender. For the first time in modern history, maybe in all history, challenges to assumptions about women's place in society – in the family, in their relationship to their husbands and children, in the business and professional world, in government and politics – enjoyed significant success. Before 1970, it was common for both men and women to argue that women must be treated differently than men in law and in manners, that they must have different ambitions or aspirations, and, moreover, that women had of necessity unique social and family obligations. After 1970, such views would drift outside the mainstream.

In many ways the change was truly revolutionary. Almost certainly no one in the fifties would have predicted it.