Explain how the roles of women changed during the 1960s and 1970s, and explain how those roles have continued to change.

The second-wave feminist movement is said to have begun in 1963 when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. Friedan's study probed the interior lives of women -- albeit, white middle-class women -- who were discouraged from pursuing their ambitions by a society that insisted they limit themselves to being housewives and mothers. 

Though Friedan's book planted the seed of dissension, women's roles generally remained traditional and unchanged during most of the 1960s. It was not until the late 1960s -- the beginning of the "Summer of Love" in 1967 -- that things changed more palpably due to the advent of The Sexual Revolution.

Despite our present-day alignment with the hippies and other faces of The Sexual Revolution, the movement was largely counter-cultural and viewed as strange by the mainstream. Nonetheless, sexual revolutionaries questioned the validity of monogamy, particularly within marriage, and supported the emergence of queer identities. All of this resulted in an expanded understanding of gender, or of what it meant to be a man or a woman. 

Feminine style changed drastically from 1960 to 1969, from glamorous and girdled to simple and natural. Women began to work and to pursue educations in earnest, as opposed to attending college with the mere purpose of finding husbands. They also began to participate in political movements, such as anti-Vietnam and Civil Rights protests, though their presences in these movements were often marginal.

The discovery of sexism among their brothers-in-arms encouraged women to look at the ways in which they worked to support the rights and liberties of others (e.g., blacks, students demanding free speech), while their own demands for expansion were ignored or scoffed at. Moreover, revolutionary women generally worked behind the scenes, stuffing envelopes or preparing meals.

By 1970, women -- again, generally white, middle-class, and educated -- organized efforts toward their own well-beings. They demanded expanded access to education, which resulted in Title IX -- a portion of the Educational Amendments of 1972 which ensured that no one would be denied educational opportunity on the basis of sex. They also demanded equal access to employment. Prior to this, classified ads frequently followed job descriptions with "Women Need Not Apply." In further regard to finances, in 1972, women were allowed to open bank accounts and lines of credit in their own names, whereas before they could only access money and credit through their husbands, despite being responsible for household budgets.

The next major gain came with reproductive rights. The 1965 Supreme Court case, Griswold v. Connecticut, gave couples access to oral contraceptives without interference from the state. However, abortion remained strictly forbidden in most states until the Burger Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. The court made the decision using the Fourth Amendment's clause on "right to privacy," thus allowing women to determine their own lives based on their personal circumstances. 

All of these gains in education, employment, financial access and, particularly, access to reproductive care, were hard-won. Women and their feminist allies continue to fight to maintain these gains, though some have been stripped away. Many states, particularly in the South, make it very difficult for low-income women to have access to reproductive care, as they find ways to restrict abortion and other services without disobeying the law altogether.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is intended to close the wage gap between men and women, but employers still pay women less than their male counterparts and wages are lower for women of color than they are for white women.

In education, rape remains very prevalent on college campuses with administrators often doing more to protect the reputation of their colleges and universities than students. Finally, despite some strides, women remain woefully underrepresented in the STEM fields and frequently report discouragement from their male peers, such as the unwillingness of many male scientists to co-write papers with female colleagues.

Though our ideas about who women can be have hugely expanded, allowing for a wide array of expressions of gender identity, as well as the inclusion of transgender women, there is still an expectation that women fulfill traditional roles. Women still perform the majority of housework. Women are still valued mainly according to their youth and beauty and are held to standards of beauty, while men are not. Women who choose not to marry or have children are still regarded as oddballs. Lastly, there is still a tendency to view women as emotionally unstable when they are express their emotions or as frigid when they choose stoicism.

Some things change, others stubbornly remain the same.