Flat-topped Aster

Brent is staying here for awhile and showed me a newspaper that he found in the attic of his house. It was from 1962. The front page was somewhat interesting but the real gem was the "Help Wanted Ads". There were separate listings for "Help Wanted - Men" and "Help Wanted - Women". The man's section included ads for engineers, foremen, machinists. The woman's section was looking for typists, receptionists, and teachers. The male area always stated "men" while the female area always referred to "girls" (the "Business Girls Wanted" ad turned out to just want office workers). Many of the ads in the women's section had qualifications that included "attractive" or "pretty" and there was one "cute". The men's section only specified skills needed. Some monthly salaries were included and, you guessed it, the women's jobs were consistently about $100 less than the men's (note, though, that the jobs were not comparable). I thought back to 1962. I was 10 then and wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up. A sign that things were beginning to change.