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?

We had no technology. As a student studying it meant buying (very expensive) core texts for your course and going to the library to look through books for any information you needed. Records (in my case nursing) were hand written on Cardex system. Temperatures were taken by glass thermometers - washed in bicarbonate of soda between patients (yuk!). Blood pressure taken by hand using a stethoscope and sphygmomanometer.

Floppy disks. Someone would come in with the latest Wonderwizz software that you loaded disk by disk (either me with no idea or a manager with less idea or maybe someone who knew about IT). Every disk you were on pins it would load correctly.
Then 'someone' had to learn what the software did. Whilst taking calls, putting stuff in internal envelopes etc

Floppy disks were actually a massive improvement. The Commodore PETS used a cassette to load up the programs, and you needed to do that every time you wanted to use it as the early ones didn't have a big enough hard drive to store all the programs we used, and we also needed to save all data back onto cassettes and load that up too when we wanted to update it. They were basically like home computers of that era where you had to connect your music cassette player to load up a game whenever you wanted to play it. The programs we used on the Commodore PETS could take a long time to load and, like home games computers, they'd often fail and you'd have to rewind the cassette and try again!

I was in my teens, but looking back I definitely think the everyday sexism was worse.

I couldn't return to my ancillary post ( later post became prof and tech) in the NHS after my son was born because of my husband's low income (shop assistant ) we simply couldn't afford to pay for nursery I got 12 weeks mat leave and had a dreadful labour and emergency section followed by a wound infection so was too ill to return so soon after birth anyway. We were broke there were no family credit or tax credits, with my first baby I can't remember whether I got even got family allowance.
I can remember people staff and patients touching my bump with no permission, and more senior male staff patting my bum, or pulling me in for a hug, we had to wear black stockings or tights and a white nurses dress.
Totally impractical when wrestling with patients or equipment and the end of a decade of service to the NHS Psychiatry service as it then was. The large Victorian building was pulled down shortly afterwards.
Fantastic time to work there though so many innovative treatments starting to come along in the mid to late 80s.

Oh definitely. @EverythingYouDoIsaBalloon Women made the tea, couldn't wear trousers, had to answer the phones if there was no general switchboard in the company I worked for.
6 weeks maternity pay at 90% and then 12 at a pittance I think, maybe less than that.
Women were routinely demoted after maternity leave, or simply forced out because there was no flexibility given. Older colleagues were incredibly judgy about moms 'choosing to work' with no acknowledgement that 2 wages were needed to pay the mortgage.
Lunchtime drinking, luncheon vouchers and the fashion was good fun at the time though.

My DH is a computer nut and we have a collection (junk) and have at least one Commodore PET. When we went to the Science Museum he couldn't decide if he was disappointed or thrilled to discover his collection was bigger and better than theirs.

I've warned him if he dies before me they are all going in a skip, well several skips. It is an amazing cure for man flu.

I have been reminded by other posts about internal mail and message books and talking into a dictaphone for someone to type up on a typewriter. The queues at the photocopier which was always breaking. Fax machines being huge progress. Cabinets full of huge paper files. Trying to phone people from other agencies and constantly missing each other. Despite the difficulties I don't think the pressure was as intense as it is these days.
I don't think lone worker policies and health and safety were very well developed. I used to go out on home visits to some very tricky situations and if the visit went on after the office closed there were no checks that you were safe. I had one scary experience with an angry man refusing to let me leave for 90 minutes. Things changed after Suzy Lamlugh's disappearance.

I'd love to still have a PET. But at least I've still got a ZX80 and a Spectrum and I think a Commodore 64 from the early 80s.

My pride and joy is a "touch screen" (well by using a stylus anyway, sadly not a finger) from the early 90s which was a Compaq laptop and pretty revolutionary at the time in not needing a mouse or keyboard to navigate the screen.

Also got an early Amstrad laptop (a heavy bugger) from around 1990. And probably 20 various assorted laptops from the last 30 years. I have them all stacked up in a metal cupboard.

They're all in working condition, and I do crank them up occasionally, either for playing retro games or for the more modern ones, in case a client or I need to check archives for data etc. I've got running versions of most book-keeping software, from MYOB to Sage going back to their earliest version, from Pegasus through to TAS.

But I agree with your OH. We went to the science museum a few years ago and were really underwhelmed by their poor display of old computers. Our local college of FE has a better display in display cabinets along the corridors of their IT dept!

I got passed over for promotion while I was on maternity leave with DD1. When I went back to work it was the women as much as the men who couldn't understand why I hadn't stayed home with my child. This was 1981. It was dreadful.

@Anonymouseposter

I have been reminded by other posts about internal mail and message books and talking into a dictaphone for someone to type up on a typewriter. The queues at the photocopier which was always breaking. Fax machines being huge progress. Cabinets full of huge paper files.

At my first employer, we didn't even have a photocopier at first. Which was really strange as they had computers and printers! The senior partner (very old bloke who founded the company) apparently didn't trust copiers!

The firm was set up "old school" in that if we couldn't do a carbon copy, i.e. correspondence and accounts etc was always typed with carbon copies, so they were OK, but anything that couldn't use carbon paper, we had to "copy" in long hand and then get someone else to read it over and sign formally to say it was true extract of the original document with a rubber stamp with wording something like "I certify these are true extracts of the original document", i.e. things like supplier invoices, or an extra copy of accounts or a letter if not enough carbon copies had been done!

When he finally accepted he needed to buy a photocopier, he wouldn't accept it was like a "photo" of the original document and insisted we carry on "calling over" to compare the copy with the original, and continue to use the rubber stamp and signing the copy to certify it was a true copy! Really very strange, but I suppose if you've had 40+ years of doing it that way, you may be reluctant to change your ways! Needless to say, the moment he finally retired, we stopped all that nonsense!

These stories are great! Very insightful 😁

I think there are a few inconsistencies on the thread because the 1980s was a time of great change and rural areas were a bit behind cities, especially London. I worked in Manchester in the late 1970s, there were plenty of supermarkets, When I moved to a rural area in North Wales the fairly large nearest town only had a small Kwik save and individual shops, like the greengrocers and bakers.
I came from a small Lancashire town. It would have caused ructions if I had moved in with my husband before getting married and there was a lot of whispering if anyone "had to be married"( i.e. pregnant) from my mother's generation. I think cities were ahead with Women's refuges etc.
In the early 1980s terry nappies were mainly used but by the mid 80s disposables. I think people's experience will vary slightly depending on whether they had their children late 1970s or late 1980s and where they lived. There's still a lot in common though, with the smoky offices, sexual harassment and the technological revolution that has taken place. I think this also accounts for some people saying most women didn't return to work when their children were young and others saying that everyone they knew did go back after maternity leave (once they got the opportunity in 1979).

Dictaphones! How could I forget? The hand held ones used by eg doctors and the large playback machine for the cassette and worked by a pedal. Stop/play/fwd/rewind. Cassettes piled up or sent in those internal envelopes again.

I had my industry gap year in the eighties when I was studying for my degree.

The company I was in had no female senior management. The women there were all PAs and secretaries, apart from a pair of Home Economists that worked in a separate building on site. I was a marketing assistant. At times I had to help out on reception and the switchboard along with the other women to cover breaks and days off etc. I don't remember any of the junior sales men having to do this.

My manager was known in the business by all the women as "Pervy Terry". They gave me tips, as a pretty innocent 20 year old, on how to avoid getting into uncomfortable situations with him, (he had groped a few women, and none of this was challenged or raised to HR, there was no proof and his word against theirs ) for example - leave the door open when called into his office so the PA could listen and step in, don't wear anything that would expose legs and cleavage, take the chair to the end of his long desk so he'd have less of a chance to stare at your breasts etc. The Home Economists would check in with me daily to see if I was OK, and take me over to the kitchens for a break on some training excuse. 😅

I was called "Missy" a few times if I challenged something he wanted me to do and I suggested a new or better way. Put right in my place.

I was often sent on errands to pick up directors new company cars, drop off for a service, or chores that were not relevant to the job and were personal errands. There was a lunch time boys club Friday involving trips out to the pub, and coming back worse for wear, more lecherous and having PAs drive them home in their company cars.

Horrendous now thinking on it. But the cameraderie and support of the women working there, who survived their way through daily misogyny - that I will always treasure. I love that part of "Working Girl" and it really resonated with me when I watched it recently.

When I say "pretty innocent" I mean I wasn't worldly wise. Not that I was pretty. 😅

We've got too many to mention but yes we have 2 ZX80s and 2 ZX81s, lots of Commodores of various models.

I started work in the mid 70s, page 3 of the Sun type pictures on the wall in places where mainly men worked. Two colleagues in the 80s, one male, one female, male got promoted so more pay, woman was told it was because he was married and had children to support and needed the money more.

When I started work, it was calculators, punch cards and reams of big stripy computer paper. Later on in the 80s it was computers with green writing on the screens, think it was DOS, this was before word and excel.

When I started work it was comptometers, the senior lady in accounts had a calculator that did percentages. People used to come to the office to see it working. God I'm old.

In one of my jobs in the mid 80s, they still used hand-cranked adding machines. That was a real shock as my previous job had electronic adding machines and computers. Just shows how some workplaces were more advanced and embraced technology whilst others remained in the dark ages.