What shock me the most while reading Terkel's book is how important status was to women back then. Even being married to a man with high staus was taken very seriously. Not to say status isn't important in today times ... it's just that not everyone can reach their dream job(if hey have one). Now it's more like find any job to pay your bills and most women are not happy with what they do but do it just to get by. Even in 1972 the women with high status jobs found out that their jobs was over rated and wasn't to happy with that. I think thats the only thing that stayed the same.