To think woman don't have it better now?

In the 90s senior women couldn't return to their job after childbirth at the household name company I worked for.

Maternity leave was 6 weeks at 90% and 13 weeks at £50- then you went back to work at a lower level or not at all
I was asked at interview why they should employ me as I would only have children

Love the woman blaming here! That never changes, huh?

I read those threads too. It’s pretty clear to me those women are not ‘putting up with that shit’. They are desperately trying to change it. But you can’t actually physically make someone do something they refuse to do. And those men just refuse to pull their weight. There isn’t anything these women can do to make them. So stop blaming women for men’s chosen behaviour.

The only option is to leave, but the dire state of the housing market makes housing unaffordable and inaccessible for many, high cost of living, and ease with which men can get out of or reduce child maintenance means many women feel practically and financially trapped.

I'm 46 and one thing I really have noticed is respect in the workplace. I have a finance job and when I look back to some of the goings on when I started in my early 20s I cringe. Where I work, lots of senior females.

Well there's a long way to go before women are truly equal to men.

But it's better than it's ever been.

You are right to be concerned about the likes of Donald Trump, though. We are beginning to go backwards in many ways.

This is an interesting thread.
I think that it's easy to forget that times were hard for both men and women until about 100 years ago. A lot of examples given above are more extremes and examples of the risk rather that typical every day existence. Illiteracy was common, the vote wasn't given to "common" men until late 19th century. I really don't think the balance of good to bad , or lazy to industrious people has changed over the years.

I have also been thinking that the advent of the pill and sexual revolution liberated men more than women. We now have high expectations of having sex early in relationships, with a higher cost to women still.

Historically inaccurate. Women couldn’t have mortgages in their own names in the 1970s, marital rape wasn’t a crime, contraception and abortion are much more widely available, sexual discrimination is illegal etc etc; you need to take a longer and more informed view.

It feels like things peaked about 5-10 years ago and have been in decline since. In particular in the USA but in terms of reproductive rights but globally in general too.

Marital rape was legal.

Married men got a tax break.

Employers could easily pay women less money just by giving them a different job title.

I know you mentioned the dire state of rape convictions OP but I can remember a couple of rape cases and the questions women were put through were horrendous, and all reported in the news.

Arthur Hutchinson broke in to a house, murdered three occupants and then raped the 18 year old daughter at knife point.

OK I have just looked and this was the 1980s, but that poor girl was drilled on whether she had enjoyed the sex. She had to give evidence in open court.

I think we do have it better, as life for women in the past was pretty awful.
We have no fault divorce now, whereas a relative of mine had to travel down to London from the North in the 1950’s to get a divorce. She had been beaten black and blue by her DH.

Was a lot of things have got better I agree with Hateam about teenagers / young women and internet porn. We can see that the mental health of girls has massively declines since 2014 with the introduction of smart phones. I would hate to be a teenage girl now, and I often have conversations with DD (21) about how she would prefer to have grown up in the 1980s, when I did. Beauty standards have massively changed as well, we did pretty much nothing other than shave and maybe put a bit of make up, now it's almost universal long hair, paying for nails and brows and lashes and waxing, and even Botox and whatever it is they do with their lips. Also, if you have a look at the female popstars from the 80s versus now, there's much more undress and writhing around. And even though there was a lot more homophobia then, there was a great lesbian scene and no one tried to persuade you were born in the wrong body.

I also think a lot of women out there don’t have it all, they just do it all.

I don’t know, me personally I would have lived in a small village with my husband chosen for me, probably would have been illiterate (which would be sad, I’m a bookworm) with zero money of my own and looking at a life of having lots of kids that I wouldn’t have particularly wanted. I prefer being alive now. Now a woman has some option to pack her bags and fuck off if she so chooses, some control over her own life. Access to work, control over fertility, control over her own finances etc have been liberators.

But I do agree with you on the violence women face, theres a long way to go and the world is a really fucking depressing place. In swathes of the world great women live small lives and I am so thankful my daughter will have more. No-one is going to be jailing or killing my DD for not wearing a headscarf, she won’t be whipped in public because some man took offence at her behaviour. Not so thankful that I can’t recognise how women still have to fight back because theres always some wanker in the wings waiting to take whats ours.

This. MN was a revelation to me. So many women still putting up with old school entitlement & laziness from men. I never thought women younger than me woukd put up with this shit.

I think life is much better for women now than ever before, the other posters are correct in all the good things they have listed.

However, where I think it has not got better is that women do generally work now, but there is generally still the expectation they are also the primary parent, nurturer of the family, etc etc whilst providing financially too.

So the burden is that there are far more balls to juggle than ever.

You shouldn’t wind your neck in or chill out!

You just need to frame it as we have not achieved anywhere near as much as we thought we had, and there is so much more to do. There are new assaults on us all the times。the popularity of violent pornography is terrifying. The casual removal of single sex spaces also. These things really show how women are still viewed as lesser.

I think there is more understanding of women as as ‘economic unit’ but really poor understanding or concern about male violence against women.

As a middle aged women I now really see how so many women are shafted by men in divorces ( hiding assets, being persuaded to do a DIY divorce and ripped off). And child maintenance is designed to ensure men still have a good standard of living and there are many loopholes enabling men to reduce their payments.

@pollyglot - your post is fascinating, my mouth dropped open.

It wasn't until 1992 that forced sexual activity within marriage wasn't illegal in the UK. Essentially, a husband could rape their wife until then.

I think it is very slowly getting better, but there is long way to go.

I think things are much worse for girls in secondary school due mainly to Internet porn.

I'm 50. Things are measurably better now overall. When I was a child the 'career woman' was still an unusual & scary thing. My teenagers would not understand what I meant by the phrase. In my lifetime women needed a man to sign for things like mortgages and as someone said rape in marriage only recently recognised. But that doesn't mean its anywhere near perfect because progress is never linear. I'm really disappointed to hear about the persistent casual sexism my kids pick up. Porn & sexual exploitation aren't getting better because of digital media & global crime networks. Men will use everything at their disposal to exploit women. And I never thought we would see the day when lesbians were being told that men could be lesbians and they had to have sex with them or they were bigots. Or that women would lose their jobs for believing in biological reality. Things might be better in lots of respects but every generation reinvents misogyny & I think we have to get better at seeing it coming.

Women have more freedom, rights and protection from law than ever.

However rape/assault and murder cases are still high.

It's generally less acceptable for men to treat women like sex objects but it still happens and there is that 'can't say anything these day's' culture

Women are still having to fight harder to achieve in the work place. For less money.

Women are still doing the majority of housework/mental load/parenting but working too.

OK how is it not better?

Nonsense. Even in my 74 years on this earth I can see enormous changes that have benefitted women no end. Of course it's not perfect, but to imply that women are worse off now is just silly. Back then, there were so many hurdles . When I was first married, I had to have my husband's permission to buy a new carpet on HP, even though I was the breadwinner and he wasn't working. I couldn't get a loan or a mortgage as a single woman. I applied for the Married Teachers' Allowance, to be told that I had to have external gonads to qualify. There were no childcare facilities in the entire city, other than a creche in the church hall. For short-term care only. You want to be a working mother? We'll make it impossible unless you have family to help out. No tax breaks of any sort. When we travelled to the UK, both of us with grandFATHERS born in Devon, he was allowed to stay a year because his paternal grandfather was UK-born; I was allowed only 6 months because it was my maternal grandfather. Grandmothers didn't count. Just silly little irritating things like that that put women in their place.
My grandmother nursed horribly wounded soldiers throughout WWI, and still couldn't vote in Britain because she was not yet 30.
Oh, and sexual abuse? Our lecturers at Uni could abuse us at will because they held all the power. Being groped during a viva? During a tutorial? Get used to it. Protest and I'll fail you.
The thing that I do feel strongly about though is the women with children who are forced to work because of the awful issues around housing and living costs. There is no longer any choice, unless you have a high-earning partner. Young women are being worked till they drop...so very unfair.

I compare my life with that of my dm

I am university educated, she was not
I have a career still at 61. She was forced to resign when she married
I have my own home, money, pension, she did not.
I have travelled to 36 countries, experienced different cultures, she went to France in her late 60s.
I have benefitted from contraception and have chosen to have one child. She had five children and three still-borns.
I have every labour saving device, she hand washed clothes for seven of us.
I live my life free from the bullying, aggression and occasional violence of a resident man. She sadly did not.
I am free to dance in the kitchen, paint my house in sunshine colours, dress as I please, cook what I please. Am truly independent. She only achieved that when widowed.

IMO, life is infinitely better for women today. 🙂

Generally I think the lot of women has improved.However for poorer and less well educated women less so.Daily just on this site alone we read of feckless men making life hard for their wives /partners.Many cannot escape very easily or it is very difficult for them to . As for Donald Trump and the Abortion laws in US frightening to say the least .I think maybe rape laws need an overhaul as you say .There are so many problems with either getting to court or a conviction as well .YADNBU !