Stewardesses Demand End to Forced Retirement at Age 35
The TWA employees union challenged the forced retirement of stewardesses on this day.
Stewardesses were forced to retire at a certain age, forbidden to marry, and were monitored for their weight. This event was one of a number of growing challenges to the discriminatory policies regarding female flight attendants.
By the end of the 1970s, the discriminatory practices against them were gone, and the job had the unisex title of Flight Attendant. See other restrictions on stewardesses and their protests at: January 20, 1966; March 10, 1973.
Read about the challenges to discriminatory treatment of “stewardesses”: Kathleen M. Barry, Femininity in Fight: A History of Flight Attendants (2007)
Watch a documentary on the history of stewardesses/flight attendants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmFFeEVED2s
The “Sixties” really began in the mid-1950s and ended in the early 1970s. Read: Christopher B. Strain, The Long Sixties: America, 1955-1973 (2016)