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Even before the launch of the Sputnik space satellite in 1957, United States government personnel were concerned about impending shortages of manpower, particularly among scientists and engineers, and anxious that the Soviet mobilization of women into the labor force gave the communists a considerable advantage. Popular derision of the “unfeminine” qualities of Russian women clashed with the needs of the American economy, and ultimately the US government began to implement policies that would prepare the ground for the subsequent American feminist movement. This article analyzes the conflicting discourses of two primary sources from the late 1950s. Eastern Bloc commitment to women’s education, training, and full employment forced the United States to reassess its position on the traditional family. Fear of Soviet technical superiority was, therefore, an important and generally overlooked factor driving the expansion of women’s rights in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century.