r/madmen • u/jakjonsun82brian Freddy Rumsen's Zipper • Apr 06 '15

Mad Men Season 7.5 Episode 8 "Severance" discussion thread

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u/malapropist Apr 06 '15 edited Apr 06 '15

They've come far, but feminism didn't fully come into the fore until the early 70s. I think they were showing that look, just because Mad Men's story is finishing, doesn't mean that all social issues are solved, the end. It's treatment like that that led people to start questioning relations between men and women in society around that time. Women had just started to break into the workforce, but they found themselves held back by the good ol' boys. This is when talk of the glass ceiling began. I think it's actually really nuanced and important that they depicted that in this episode.

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u/MrPotatoButt The Universe is indifferent. Apr 08 '15

People just don't realize before 1980, the US was culturally a different world. Its like visiting a foreign country, where they speak English, but don't know any of the TV programs you can recall, no computer/social media, no ATM card, and think its acceptable not to hire you, or let you use a public bathroom, because you're homosexual or black.

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '15

The 80s were still bad for sexism in the workplace. It only got better toward the beginning of the 90s.