How have you seen things change for women during your lifetime?

[BluePansy]

I’m 47 and I’ve seen things change form when I was young and starting work etc
if people were completely sexually inappropriate
you were expected to “laugh it off”
in other words put up and shut up and smile nicely at the same time 😡😡

im so glad to see for future n generations the tide feels like its really stated to then on this now

my mum tells me how when she was younger a woman couldn’t even get a bank account or buy a house
which is just so hard for me to get my head around

just wondering what changes you’re seen
I know there’s still a long way to go

Much the same as you OP. Sexism and misogyny were everyday events at work for me for many years. Even as recently as a decade ago we were expected to laugh it off.

i was (low level) sexually assaulted at work half a dozen times over the decades and again expected to laugh it off.

im the boss now and ensure a zero tolerance approach to all that shit.

I'm younger but I've noticed since my youth there is so much pressure on women to look a certain way. Yes, we had pressure to be thin but now you have to have a slim waist, butt, boobs, perfect skin, lips etc. I'm so glad I didn't have that pressure. I think everything is a lot more materialistic and looks focused and you can't seem to have as much fun in case of a bad photo!

And my friends and I all looked quite different whereas things are quite homogeneous now.

At least we didn’t have to have men in women’s spaces, sports, hospital wards or prisons until about ten years ago. The spectacle of men beating the hell out of a woman and being awarded an Olympic medal for it would have been unthinkable .

Yes, I actually feel bad for the younger generation, being photographed all the time, they grew up with this, but we thankfully didn’t

even now though say this week, I did a crafty evening out thing.
the prison running it was taking photos of everyone without permission

a charity coffee get together thing
again someone taking photos of everyone sitting at tables, not posing, to be posted on socials

then a school thing where they are taking photos too
which end up on x fb the website or newsletter

it’s like you can’t just go about normal life without being photographed all the bloody time !!

This 10000%

according to the doctor (Sandie Peggie tribunal) you can’t even define what a woman is as it’s such a nebulous concept

rights are being rowed back for women due to this absurd TWAW

I wonder if this will ever be stopped ?

trans women being allowed to enter into woman’s swimming races etc ?

pretty sure 99percent of People don’t want trans woman in women’s areas liek competitive games, changin rooms, toilets and jails

I don't know, I felt huge pressure as a teenager 30 years ago to be stick thin. Hated my perfectly normal hips and boobs as a result.
I think there is a lot more positivity around body shapes now.

Yes and no

The most pervasive thing I've noticed is how differently men treat attractive women

It’s become normalised to get Botox, fillers and other tweakments. I’m all for everyone exercising individual choice, but looking at the context we make that choice in too.

The more women do this, the worse lots of others will feel about ourselves as we compare normal signs of approaching middle age against the new normal of no lines etc. So we choose to go down that road too and the balance swings further away from natural faces and more women feel like they look “old” and need to do something about it.

Also we’ve not reached equal pay yet, but the increase in beauty treatments is like an additional tax on women’s income. Getting nails done, eyebrows done, lips topped up. That’s money men can spend on their hobbies or their investments.

It's shows such contempt for women. How dare we have female only toilets? It's as if us having a refuge from predatory men is some sort of insult to some.

Young women are being indoctrinated into letting men trample over their boundaries. Porn is a huge part I think. Women are supposed to enjoy sex acts which were illegal only a few years ago.

They probably resent us having the vote too.

Wouldnt be offered jobs even if you were the best candidate because you were child bearing age (and they didnt even bother to hide this). Working PT was hard to find, and if you went for another role there was always someone who got it because they would work FT.

You had to return to work when baby was 6 months.

When the first woman accused that famous movie producer of rape sexusl harassment I was expecting the usual media character assignation snidely calling her mad ,stut stupid gold digger etc but was gob snacked when they treated her respectfully not insinuating she had it coming or printing pictures of her looking compromised

made me cry

I'm 67, and when I was a child my parents - neither of them - could get a bank account because they were too poor to be allowed one! Few working class people had bank accounts - you had a post office account and/or a building society account, or you dealt in cash only. People often forget that the "privileges" of being male often didn't apply to working class men either.

My mum had to give up her office job in 1957 because she was pregnant and pregnant women were not welcome in the workforce. Affording nurseries wasn't the problem - finding one was! Women were largely expected to be SAHMs (unless you could find a family member to childmind), and that was still largely the case when I started working in (full-time)1980. Equal pay for work of equal value might have been the law by then - but it was seldom applied! I recall in 1982 I was the lead union negotiator in discussions with our employers funders, and the first meeting I went to the lead HR officer (a) thought I was there to make the teas and (b) had a nude girlie calendar on display on his wall (not that it stayed there that long by the time I had finished with him!). Only some women qualified for maternity leave because the qualifying period meant about 50% of women didn't get it.

I agree that sexism was rife. I worked in a relatively forward looking sector, and was also am active trade unionist, so I didn't personally experience much of it myself - most people were too scared of me to try it on! Which probably in itself says a lot - confident and self-assured women were considered terrifying, even by some other women.

Happily, yes. I'm 61 and things have changed for the better in the workplace. My first job after graduation involved working for a male manager (in his late 30s) who told me that working women were 'emasculating' men! I didn't argue the point with him, there was no point, he was a dick. I stuck at it long enough to get enough experience to move on to better things.

In my current job, my line manager is female, her (senior) manager is female and the manager above (a board director) is female.
Women have come a long way.

Im 50 and Im not sure. When I was first working in early twenties I was young and very pretty and thin. I was told to wear skirts only, had to wear heels, and was pushed in front of the male accounts on purpose (by the female head of the company). Sexual comments were rife, and me and my female colleagues were supposed to be flattered and laugh them off. Pretty grim. Id like to think that isnt happening now but I am in a different industry now so I dont know for sure. I hid that I was married for a while as was worried I would be treated differently (when it came out I was) and when I became pregnant. I love the fact you cant even ask that anymore.

I also remember there was a pressure to be thin - which I was - but that was it. Now it seems that thin isnt good enough - you have to have a thigh gap, hip dips, big boobs, teeny waist, thin/thick etc, My poor thin daughters angst about every part of their body as not being good enough- their clavical doesnt stick out enough etc. Its insane and worrying. I also had normal eyebrows and eyelashes and no fake tan or extensions. They just werent a thing. Id probably be considered very plain now, but then I was a 'looker'.

The TWAW is a huge backwards step though. Men were expected to protect and stand up for women more and provide. Now men are invading our safe spaces and making us feel unsafe. That seems mad to me. I remember struggling with breastfeeding and going to female only groups which were a godsend. You probably cant do that now.

So I think things are better overall for women in so much as sexual harrassment is less publicly tolerated (yet crime stats show it is still woefully undereported and prosecuted). I also know that in school sexual harrassment (upskirting etc) has become the norm which certainly wasnt the case when I was young. I think women are given better work opportunities as well overall now. BUT the TWAW are a massive regression that tbh scares me for all women and girls - especially as so many of them support it. Its a scary time we live in. So I think its a real mixed bag with positive changes for women in my lifetime.

I also think there is just more pressure to do everything extremely well. So you are meant to look like you never had a baby immediately, train like an athlete, work as a CEO, cook from scratch and make great food, don't eat UPF, have a tastefully decorated home, be very hands on with your dc, don't age but still look natural, have great relationships with your partner, friends and family etc. Now I know this is BS but I work with younger women and they buy into it & often beat themselves up because they can't manage it all.

When I first started working very few women went out to work after having children, at least when they were small. Virtually no childcare for a start. Few senior women in business. Although things have improved it does seem that far from having it all many women are now doing it all.

This.

It's strange because in one way I feel that women are expected to look a certain way nowadays,be slim,dress a certain way etc. But there was an expectation going back 40 years or so to be slim,too. I can remember when I started college at the age of 17,in 1980,I was 3.5 stone overweight, and felt like an absolute elephant compared to my class mates. I lost the weight,then put it back on again in later years. I'm 3 stone overweight now and find that people are much more accepting of it. Whether that is because people's attitudes have changed,or it's because there are more overweight people around nowadays,I don't know!

When I first started work, there were two pay streams at my employer (a major high street bank), and male staff were paid more than female staff for the exact same job and grade. They would not allow female bank employees to take out a mortgage either.

It was common in job interviews to be asked what your plans were for having a family, and even more common to not get offered a job because you were young, female and recently married...

People would look down their noses at your thus-far childlessness and sneer "Oh, so you're one of those career girls, are you?".

@JohnTheRevelator I was only born in the 80s so maybe I missed it. I just remember my aunts and friends mums etc all looking quite different. None of them were probably obese but none were very slim either or very very toned. I was a thin teenager/young person and was teased at school for being lanky & stood out for looking like that whereas I think that's the norm now.

I'm mid 50s.

Clothes and hair for children are more stereotyped these days.
Women's sports and single sex spaces more under threat than 20,30 years ago.
Non conforming children are told they must be trans.

Less tolerance for sexual innuendo etc in the workplace. More equality at work, though my workplace was v good on this in the 90s.

I'm 52 and have never experienced any sexism or sexual inappropriateness in my workplace in this country (I did while working abroad for a couple of years).

Same. Early 50s. Never felt disadvantaged in the workplace, other than in the City of London, but I wouldn’t change that experience and I moved on pretty quickly. I’ve always worked for large companies and been confident enough to either shut down or ignore any crap. I had worried that my chosen career wouldn’t last beyond a certain age, but I have happily been proven wrong and clients appreciate my wisdom and experience, albeit with wrinkles). In the corporate world, other than in the US, I don’t see a lot of big lips and big asses (and corporate women in the US have always been a bit Fox News) but I am shocked at their prevalence on the high street or, for example, on the Apprentice.