During World War II women had been encouraged to join the war effort in many ways, including factory work (a very popular icon of that effort was the image of "Rosie the Riveter"). Women were told they had a job to do and that their children would do better in day care than at home.
After the war ended in 1945, men returned from the battlefields and wanted their jobs back. Women were encouraged to be good housewives and told that their highest duty was to support their spouse. New research showed that children did better at home than in daycare and husbands of course needed dinner ready when they got home from the office or factory.
The economy had finally improved after the great depression and the American public was inundated with advertising suggesting they buy a house in the suburbs and a car and all sorts of nifty gadgets that would make housework easy and life better. Mass produced suburbs like Levittown developed in numerous places and the insterstate highway system made it practical to work in the city and live in your own home in a suburb. Television shows like "Leave it to Beaver" demonstrated the ideals - with happily married couples who spent most of their days in separate spheres.
Some women resented having to give up their jobs and their independence after the war, some were simply not as happy as they were "supposed" to be in their suburban homes. Women who did work had to fight off the perception that their husbands were unable or unwilling to provide for them. This unhappiness is what Betty Friedan articulated in her 1960 book "The Feminine Mystique." When isolated women realized they were not alone in their misery, and that their unhappiness did not mean there was something wrong with them, they started working to change things.
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