One of the worst is conveniently dated, mentioning 1950. And from what I can tell, the ones dealing with vaginal "douches" (I'll never get used to that term) should be fairly old as well - seems that notion was getting outdated even before the '50s.

How do you know?

That it's so behind? It's really not the first time I hear those numbers bandied around by women (and by the way, this is the global/average statistic and take into account what isn't available to every American woman and thus show the worst picture - the stats for individual states vary widely. Of course when you gets horror story from one state or another (in my example it was Georgia, I think) that makes a registered sex offender of a 17 y.o. woman who gave a blowjob to a 15 y.o. whose parents pressed charges, that tends to make the global picture far worse than in most part of the US it actually is. These disparities between situations depending where you live in the US are probaby a problem nearly unique to the US when it comes to comparing it globally to other far more homogenous nations.). It's looking at the various recognized rights, laws, measures in the justice systems addressing women issues/crimes against women, and when they were introduced everywhere, and at many other socio-economical conditions (poverty level among single moms and so on, programs).

If you meant how do I know for the ads, I work in an advertising agency where there's tons of books with ads from all eras and areas. Except for a few, those don't have a style older than the 60s to my eye (the ones with color photographs I would guess late 60s/70s). It's very much the sort of ads you'd see in American magazines in the "Madmen" era (Kennedy years), before the sexual revolution began. Some of those America (a certain America anyway) was way too puritan to have back as early as you think in popular magazines and such.




And we still do, including many issues on which we're perfectly comparable to the US - and there's the gap between laws and rights and what men really think about those issues privately. We're further than some (including France, or so the French women keep repeating whenever they come here), but behind many (Scandinavia, Netherlands, Germany) for a lot of issues as well. We have parity or close between men and women among the provincial caucus of ministers, for instance, and we have a 7$/day per child daycare program that makes it economically viable for women to have a career or take a part time job if they wish, but the number of women on administrative councils or among the top management in big enterprises is simply abysmal - no matter there's more women than men now studying in management/commerce, they don't rise. It's a little better in science (another field dominated by female students), but not enough. Women are still fighting the battle against the federal government for full parity for salaries for state jobs (which blocks on the whole issue of the social costs of retroactivity rather than the principles. In the private sector, it's already in place... officially at least).

That doesn't change the facts some rights/programs that would further equality or better women condition American women are still waiting for when in the leading countries on such issues those measures are now 30 y.o. for all sort of reasons I would guess (in part it may be their aversion to whatever can be construed as socialism or socialist values, in part some "traditional family values" that clash with women rights have lasted longer in the US,in part it's because the USA are nothing close to homogenous and when it comes to social issues it's often long and hard to reach consensus, when it was much faster and easier reached, or rejected, in more homogenous nations, and another factor is that there are several measures/programs that are common in Europe or Canada etc. that aren't available at all in the US - not just for women, like public healthcare and all kind of social programs. It's anot mystery that in most nations "women rights" and women's fight have made a massive contribution to advance many other social issues for everyone at the same, not just women). There's also the fact on some issues American women like men don't think it's matters the state should be involved in in the first place, so they don't fight for them. Very often it's not even that visible anymore in private lives as mentalities are often not that different among the majority of today's Americans from what they are elsewhere (and in my experience with Americans they are on average far less obsessed with things like "moral issues" as their very vocal lobby groups would make an observer believe. Taking stuff like the positions of Santorum or the Council of Bishops to be "the American opinion" would be quite stupid, there's often not any American opinion but tons of them when it comes to internal affairs. It's just that politics/justice does not always reflect this yet. They almost always advance very slowly in such things.. It's long been part of their political culture (and not necessarily always a bad thing, just different).