There were many counter domestic containment movements as women promoted the " cosmopolitan , technocratic vision of radio 's capacity to foster a progressive society unencumbered by outmoded gender expectations . " Though the radio industry was mainly male dominated , in the early 1950s a surge of mainly white women took up the ham radio as a hobby , or picked up the practice from their husbands . Some were already trained in radio communication and intelligence gathering as part of the influx of women in the workforce in the absence of men during World War Two . The ham radio community allowed women to become federally licensed radio operators able to express their passion for the amateur radio activities . Within the public sphere women were generally absent , men portrayed as the national defenders and wage earners . These ' ham ' women refused to be sequestered within the home and became quintessential of female empowerment , demonstrating the ham contributions to US national security . Ham women worked to rebel against the atmosphere of fear and tension of the Cold War by using the radio as a means of bridging the gap between ideological divides and pioneering democratic discourse and rekindling international ham communication . QSL cards became the tactile embodiment of women 's presence in the ham radio community . These cards were evidence of the failure of domestic containment as they depict practical , driven women who utilised their homes into radio stations as a way to interact with the outside world . Despite the empirical evidence , there still persisted the general fear ham woman would communicate with foreign hams , become too domineering , force their husbands to do housework and turn their children queer . During the cold war North American families turned to conventional gender roles . Domestic containment aimed to appeal to the returning male veterans and forced women to adopt feminine roles in order to appease their husbands who had returned from World War Two . As a result , women were reduced to lives of servitude and tools to benefit the man rather than distinct and individual human beings . Female sexuality was repressed by the ideal domestic containment family model ; the hetero-normative , generally white , nuclear family unit . Lesbianism was seen as a threat , and the increased stigmatisation of lesbians outside the family reinforced domestic containment . The idea of the ' menacing lesbian wife ' and generally conservative gendered models of marriage were propagated though mainstream culture . These ideas were undermined however by the presence of women in the workforce and burgeoning visibility of queer men and women in media . Additionally , employment rates in 1964 show 43 % of the workforce was married women with children in school . During the Cold War , politicians attempted to systematise New Deal social welfare into state policies to buttress the nuclear family unit model , ensuring the male as a necessary part of the family as the " breadwinner " . The trope of the menacing lesbian wife was designed to counter good American values and thus promote domestic containment ideals . Said archetype was often portrayed as a one who dominated her husband , refused to housework thus allowing the home to turn to disarray , shirked her parental responsibilities and was sexually frigid . Other tropes such as the dangerous prison wife were circulated in the media by politicians as part of their domestic containment campaign in order to besmirch liberal reformers with undefined stances on perversion and communism . A combination of factors lead to the eventual failure of containment culture in North America . With the Cold War coming to an end , the peak of heightened fear over , the growing acknowledgement of women 's rights , and the United States ' failure to control communism within Vietnam , containment policies were abandoned in North American government processes . The resurgence of domestic containment theory came after the September 11 attacks to the World Trade Centre , a period of fear and xenophobia similar to that of the Cold War period . The War on Terror during the Bush administration had an impact on the role of women , as it created an iteration of domestic containment with ideas on traditional conservative gender roles mirroring the sentiments of the Cold War period
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Domestic containment