What was life like in the workplace if you are a woman or bringing up a young family in the 80s?

[Martinii]

I was only a small child in the 80s, so I can't really remember it.

There's always people saying how wonderful the 80s were, and you can't deny the music, films, and fashion were great. But that's always from women who were either a child or teen during the decade where life can be fairly carefree (like any decade as a young person).

I'm watching Working Girl, and it made me think how women were expected to wear skirts, tights, heals, etc. My mothers experience of bringing us up in the 80s as a single mum wasn't rosy, and I know she wouldn't look back in great fondness (except maybe the music).

So if you were working (as in an adult rather than a teen doing shifts for pocket money) or you were bringing up a young family, what was it like?

I wasn't bringing up children, but work was a very different place, for everyone TBH. I worked in a bank, there was an expectation for high heels, but men weren't allowed to wear white socks !

Drinking at lunchtime was entirely normal.

I wasn't really aware of any existing behaviour, maybe becuase it was so normal we didn't notice, but I enjoyed working in the company or men and women.

That said, when I got engaged, the manager who had previously been championing my career dropped me like a stone, assuming I'd soon be leaving to have children.

It was v unusual for women to come back after having a baby.

I'm too young for that, but I can tell you an interesting story about MIL. She had a youngest long after her first two kids, in the mid 80s. She was working in the built environment/interior design sort of sector and she was pretty sure she'd get the boot if they knew she was pregnant. Somehow (she was and is a slim woman) she managed to conceal the pregnancy through wearing big boxy 80s jackets apparently, and the first thing her employers knew about her being pregnant was when her husband rang to say she wasn't coming in as she was in labour!

It's so sad she felt she had to do that, but it's also incredible she managed to hide it.

Oh wow and what a shame she had to hide it. It does seem the expectation for women was once pregnant that was it for them career wise!

I know high heals are a pain, but do wish there was a happy medium between them and the trainers many people wear nowadays. Lunchtime drinking sounds fun 😁

I started work in 1988 for a bank (not customer facing) I didn't wear high heels and would wear trousers or skirts. Men had to wear suit and tie.
We had to call the managers Mr xxx

There was some drinking at lunchtime (although not me) and lots of smoking at desks.

There were a few women with kids but a lot of us were under 25. I had great fun working there.

I left work in 1980 after I had my first child. None of the women I knew worked after they became mothers.

We were not allowed to wear trousers (skirts or dresses only). No open toe shoes and always had to wear tights.

No mini skirts allowed.

If they knew you were pregnant you were not allowed sick pay if you were ill ( classed as self inflicted injury!)

If you were unmarried and became pregnant you had to complete a form to say you were not impregnated on company premises!

I don’t look back to the way women were treated at that time with any fondness.

It was a mixed time.
In forward thinking ethical companies equal opportunities was the big thing. Lots of equal opportunity training focused on racism and sexism and real efforts to tackle it. In most places still lots of sexism - sexist jokes, sexual harassment not taken seriously, pregnant women discriminated against, racism. In the worst places, page 3 calendars on the wall of topless women, rampant misogyny, and racism.
It was still legal to sack people for being gay and lesbian so lots of people hid it. Disabled accommodations were very poor although there were some jobs you could only get if you were disabled such as lift attendant. This was a hangover from the end of the second world war when some jobs were reserved for injured veterans.
Smoking in offices was commonplace and going to the pub at lunchtime was normal.
The good side was that lots of jobs did not have outputs you were measured on or annual appraisals. The only jobs with outputs were those that naturally lent themselves to it such as manufacturing jobs. But for years my office jobs these days always have targets for my work.
There was a lot less paperwork because most companies did not have all staff with computers, only those with admin jobs. So reports were not routinely emailed round because it was much more work to photocopy and send them out to everyone.
Bad employers still ran their staff ragged, but good employers were more relaxed than jobs these days. There was less annual leave though for most people, but more sick pay days allowed. No one left early to go to the school play or school event, because schools did not expect parents to attend during the day - I am sure a few exceptions, but in general.

Well I was a teenager and heading to university in the 80s, but in my country abortion was illegal, contraception was difficult to access easily (any form of contraception other than the ‘rhythm method’ was illegal before 1979, and then only for ‘bona fide family planning purposes, and only after 1985 could they be sold to anyone over 18 ), marital rape was not criminalised until 1990, divorce was illegal till the mid-1990s, and woman’s participation in the workplace was low at the start of the 80s, despite the fact that they had higher levels of education, and appalling workplace discrimination and pay gaps.

The 80s were a shitty time to be a woman, but women (and I’m including my teenage self here) did astonishing work to change that.

I had two children in the 1980s and went back to work after both.

All my friends did, too. We got maternity pay and could go back to our previous jobs.

I don't recognise the descriptions of the 1980s from previous posters. It sounds more like the 1950s or 1960s.

I agree dress was more formal, and there were often sexist expectations for the women with what they wore.
In some offices we still had the old fashioned wooden desks rather than the MFI stuff we have now that looks smart, but does not last.
A friend worked in the City in an entry job and was thinking of quitting. She said that there was immense pressure from the senior bosses to have sex with them to gain promotion. About 4/5 years later the City had to settle a number of sex discrimination cases for sexual harassment.
You still had a legal right to request your wage in cash, although most people had their salary paid into a bank account. But I remember you could go to a cash desk in the local authority to get your wages.
Fewer people had cars, so more people lived closer to work.
Health and safety was not as good.

@TheShellBeach It was a time of transition. Loads of women worked in local authorities because they had good maternity pay as did some other forward thinking employers. But others were still stuck back in the past. There is also a difference between the early eighties and late eighties.
I know now more people work in small companies than the large employers, I assume it was the same back then. They can be slow to change employee practices.

I started work in 1985 in a London bank. My boss and his sidekick used to stand watching us grad girls arrive for work, and loudly speculate who was wearing stockings and who tights. Heels were normal.

Sexism was everywhere. Sexual assault was not uncommon. Safety in numbers.

In the late 80s I was flying home from a business trip in the US with a senior male colleague (20 years older). We took off, had the meal, lights down, went to sleep. I woke to find his hand under my blanket and up under my skirt. The BA stewardess moved me to a seat near their station. She wasn't shocked.

There was a lot of money swilling around the city. It wasn't a nice place to work as a young woman, couldn't drop your guard for a second but it was the only place I've ever had a 45% pay rise. I was glad to leave.

I was late teens to mid twenties in the 80s and mostly working (no uni), I started having kids in the 90s.

But I really don't remember the 80s as that different from now. There was maternity leave and plenty of women did go back to work, and there were nurseries etc. I had friends who had children in the mid eighties.

Where I worked (office) it was sort of the done thing to wear skirts and dresses, so I did to fit in with the other women. Used to wear court shoes. I didn't mind it, that was just my work outfit.

It was not a written rule though, and in other departments of the same organisation women would wear trousers.

Page 3 girl posters on the common room walls

Cricket and football as the conversation

Being expected to shut up and never speak up in a meeting just take the minutes ( I was in a tech role ) , being told off for being assertive in my appraisal , being passed over for promotion

On the bright side after 2 years got an additional 10% pay rise because of the gap that had opened up between the women and men's salaries ( in just 2 years )

Most of the other women had left by that point

@Pemba three months statutory maternity leave was only granted in 1999. Before that maternity leave varied widely.

In the 1980s maternity leave varied from company to company and was linked to length of service. From 1985, workplace-subsidised nurseries were deemed a taxable benefit, adding £700 to £1,000 to women's tax bills. In 1987, the universal maternity grant was removed. State-paid maternity allowance was restricted. The same year, a training supervisor, Maria Brown, lost a lawsuit against her employer, who had selected her for redundancy because she was pregnant.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-timeline-maternity-leave-2113236.html

I started work in an office in 1986 as a 17 year old. Men wore suits and ties rainmacs and carried briefcases even if they were a low grade senior managers had their own offices and you were expected to call them Mr not by their first names 95 percent of managers were men
Smoking was commonplace as was drinking at lunchtimes and on a Friday no one came back after lunch at all
You were allowed bank time to collect your weekly wages and there were tea breaks and a bell was rang when they were oven one in the morning and one in the afternoon. People got out their knitting or read the paper or a book
Everyone had plants on their desk and hotdesking was unheard of
There were very few computers and we had a typing pool and a whole team of people who dealt with photocopying or microfiche or fax requests we had hundreds of papers posted to us each day which had to be counted sorted and batched we also had a keying room where people spent all day keying the info in. An ice cream van would stop outside and someone would be sent to get ice creams The toilets were only on every other floor
It really was a different world!!

My local authority had a tea girl (she was called that) who came round at official tea breaks with tea and coffee and biscuits.
I worked in a factory for a bit and we had tea breaks and lunch breaks and 5 minutes break every so often so smokers could smoke at the side of the line.

I was a young woman in the late 80s/90s.

When I started by current office job in 1991 we weren't allowed to wear trousers. Tight were (and still are) worn although trousers are allowed now. I had a child in 1997 and I wasn't expected to come back after. I was asked in my interview when i wanted children.

In the late 80s I was a hairdresser. There was smoking everywhere in the building and pub lunches were normal until late 90s.

Very few women with children had a career. Some had a little Saturday job.

Women's rights in the workplace were bad by the sounds of it. I remember having an interview as a 16 year old in 2001 where the manager (in his 50s) looked me up and down and said "oh yes you'll be lovely". It was only a hotel job as a 16 year old but my god, if my dd came home and told me that I'd never let her accept the job! But it seemed normal back then even in the early 2000s.

I am surprised @BreezyWriter when I had my first in the early 90s I was entitled to a year off for maternity, a lot of that time unpaid though. And if you didn't return you would have to pay the employer back your maternity pay. But I understand from DD's friends that that is still the case.

Maybe it's because I worked in a public sector job though? But then my friend that had a child mid 80s and worked for a retail company was still entitled to keep her job. Not sure if /how much maternity pay she got.

Surely by the 80s it would have been illegal to dismiss a woman for being pregnant?

I remember DH actually got a whole 3 days paternity leave! We were blown away with that at the time, as it was a new thing. Probably because he worked for a European company who'd just expanded into the UK.

I started work in 1981. I was in a supposedly professional government office but sexism and pervy behaviour was rife and not taken seriously so much so that we didn't even raise complaints. I worked surrounded by fag smoke every day which was repulsive even then. Obviously there were no computers so all of our work was pen, paper and calculator. We did have some fun though as I was young and so were many of my colleagues. Lunchtimes we would often go to the pub and see our customers there too. We drank vodka normally so our breath wouldn't smell boozy.

Totally agree with your post, that's not the 1980's I recognise. I didn't have children but most of my friends did and they all went back to work after their paid maternity leave. All had mortgages to pay. Plenty of smoking in offices though, it was rank.

People are always saying how wonderful the 80s were? Really?! Which people???!? 😂😂😂

I was born in the 80s and even as a child I could tell it was dull. Things are much better now!

@Pemba The nineties was different to the eighties. The link in the article I posted said in 1987Maria Brown, lost a lawsuit against her employer, who had been selected her for redundancy because she was pregnant. So yes women could be made redundant for getting pregnant.
Maternity leave varied widely in the eighties because there was no minimum required by law. You could just as easily say now days, well myself and everyone I know in work gets private health insurance. In some places this is routine, but lots of people do not get it.
Yes local authorities gave the best maternity benefits so had lots of women workers.

Being groped on public transport.
Being paid a fraction of my worth (and any male employee).
Being expected to make the tea because I had tits.

Learning to smile and turn a blind eye to the constant sexist "banter" because to stand up for myself would have entailed being fired.

Having to watch men being promoted over me because they were male, regardless of being utterly useless.

Noticing that no matter how hard I worked or how good I was at my job, I was on a hiding to nothing because I wasn't in the boy's club.

And ten years later, as we segued into 1990, losing my job because I was pregnant.