Was the 1940's/1950's America so bad for women?

A movement of "trad wives" ("traditional wives", referring to a very traditional historic conservative family structure with a stay-at-home mother and wife, with a husband who goes to work and sustains the family) has become somewhat popular in recent years, as a sort of small counter-culture to modern feminism and social justice ideology.

Sometimes such a "trad wife" will post a picture or video in social media expressing a sentiment along the lines of that she wishes she could travel back in the time to the 1940's or 1950's, to experience the true American family culture of the time.

Almost invariably some leftist will remark something alluding to she not understanding how horrendous the life of wives and women in general was in America at that time.

Among so many other things, second-wave feminism (and obviously fully embraced by modern feminism) has succeeded in planting into the global consciousness the idea that in the kind of "golden era" of traditional conservative American suburban culture, in the decades from the 1940's to the 1960's or so, women in general and wives in particular were living an extremely oppressed life: They were under the heel of a full-on patriarchy that considered the husband the authoritarian head of the family and the wife his full servant with no say in anything, who was pretty much in essence a house maid and a sex slave for her husband, regularly beaten and abused by her husband, with no life outside the kitchen, and overall with significantly less rights than men at all levels of society, from the family level to the governmental level.

This concept has been so widespread that a lot of people just believe it.

Yet, what exactly is their evidence that this is the case?

If you watch movies and documentaries from the era about traditional suburban families, read books and newspapers from the era, letters, diaries and so on and so forth, this is absolutely not the picture you get.

Sure, there probably were some asshole men that treated their wives like trash, but this is in no way exclusive to this era or this place, as this is sadly a universal thing that has existed pretty much everywhere in the world during the entire history of humanity. However, was this in any way prevalent in the United States in the era of the 40's, 50's and 60's?

I don't see any evidence that it was. It happened sometimes, obviously, but I don't see any evidence that it was in any way prevalent. If you look at all the evidence from that era, what you find is that on average women, especially married women, were treated with respect and dignity. Some attitudes taught to and said about women might sound slightly out of touch to modern 2nd-wave-feminist ears, but they are nowhere even nearly as bad or as prevalent as they want you to believe (and even those few attitudes are something that many consider bad just because they have been taught to be considered bad. Whether they actually are, not much discussion is held or even allowed.)

Could some things have been better back then in this regard? Sure. But it was not even nearly as bad as modern feminists want to depict. In fact, I would argue that back then most housewives had it significantly better than their granddaughters and grand-granddaughters have it today.

I am of the strong opinion that the "traditional housewife" life style should be considered a completely normal and acceptable choice for any woman to live if she so chooses, without any sort of stigma, shame or deterrent. It is very wrong to discourage or disparage women who would choose it. In fact, I would even posit that this kind of life style should be slightly encouraged over more destructive life styles (which are way too popular today). It is a much healthier and happier life than many that in modern society are considered "better". No pressure, but it should be considered a completely valid legit acceptable choice.