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

I'm 47 now so 80s kid and 90s teen. I didn't experience sexual harassment anywhere but definitely saw sexism in one job in particular. It was that type of subtle but deeply ingrained stuff, I was the only woman at my level and it was a 2 tier system with the fee earners who were men, and female secretaries, who were called 'the girls'. The men frequently referred to me as one of the girls, leaving me out of meetings and decision making. The 'girls' then refused to do a lot of admin for me because they were too busy with work from the men. If you remember Peggy from Mad Men, that was me. It was all very pleasant and polite but extremely difficult for me. It wouldn't be tolerated now, that was early 2000s.

It depends on your social group but I find women today to be a little more shallow, into their looks more and have very little conscience about fast fashion or the origins of the products they use. Maybe that's just the younger women I work with, I may be generalising unfairly. They are into buying tat on Shein and Instagram influencers and love island, they know very little about the world. I find women my age and older to be more real and authentic and harder working. I don't work with any young men as it happens.

By comparison my Mum was married in 1969 at 22 in Catholic Ireland. I have a photo of her in a local paper at a dress dance dated early 1970 with a group of young women. Everyone of them is named with their husbands name only 'Mrs John Smith'. She literally didn't have a name. It gives me the rage and makes me feel very privileged by comparison. I went to Uni, moved away from home, went overseas etc. I feel very lucky to be part of the generation I was.

I’m 68. Maternity rights didn’t exist, when I bought my first house the income multiple was only 1x the woman’s salary, my husband raping me wasn’t a crime or even grounds for divorce, sexism at work including telling us what to wear….

On the other hand anal sex or BDSM practices were never mentioned, there was no expectation for me to remove my pubic hair, young men were not porn addicts and were delighted to get any at all, I didn’t have to pretend that some of the were women despite the fact that our clothing was pretty much unisex and a lot of them had hair longer than me…..

At my first workplace 28 years ago men openly shared porn magazines in the canteen. Crude language and "banter" was common. Women were expected to tolerate it. One of the women started buying playgirl and bringing it in to see how they liked that sort of behaviour in reverse. Didn't really do much. Just over 20 years ago I was advised by my university careers advisor to not admit to having a child when applying for STEM jobs as employers would pass me by. It was still a man's world and single mums were not the norm at all in those jobs.

I do remember page 3 and garages with topless photos stuck up. You don't get this now but has it actually gone? it's just on phones! Some of my dcs peers think only fans is a legit career 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm not sure if things are better now... I experienced all the sexual comments at work that others have in previous generations, and I'm fairly young (early 30s).

I also had a sexist boss who tried to fire me when I got pregnant, told me I'd only want to be a mother from now on and not work.

AND a couple of years ago in my 20s I had drunk men from work shout at me because I didn't want to sleep with them.

I don't know if I've just been unlucky! My mum (now in her 60s) experienced about the same level of sexual harassment in her youth as me.

I'm 62. I was lucky enough to be brought up to believe I could do whatever I wanted as far as work. We weren't wealthy, and I needed to go out to work rather than college or Uni. But I was the manager of a TV rental shop by age 19, and had to argue with many a customer who would not believe I was the manager. That continued from about 1982 right through to 1999 when I left retail.
Sexual inappropriate behaviour was rife. If we all spoke up about what we endured many many men aged over 60 would be trembling in their boots for a knock on the door.

I also believe quite firmly that my generation are the true forgotten generation. This is what I mean. All generations up to and including the one when I was a child were put second. Never considered. Holidays were built around parental needs if they happened, with kids an afterthought. Same applied to all family decisions, house moves, that kind of thing. My age group but the brakes on that, and put the children first. But what that meant is that my generation never came first in their own life; not as a child, but then also not as an adult.
I do believe that has affected my age group more than we care to admit.

That women are taken seriously if they complain about sexual offences .

When I was a young woman unless you were raped in a dingy alley in broad daylight by a stranger you had no chance of a conviction. In fact people said you asked for it because you were out at night , had been drinking and were wearing something revealing or tight , and if it did go to court your sexual past was dragged up and used against you .

Men were believed over women .

Yes to everything @PinkTonic says.

I grew up in a seaside town. In the Upper Sixth (y13) I did my Bronze Medallion lifesaving award. Everyone passed. All the boys who had taken it were offered summer jobs as lifeguards. None of the girls was. I didn’t query it, it was just how life was.

Totally agree with this!

I was once told another candidate had been given a job I applied for because he was a man.

Unfortunately, it still happens - but the employer does not state it openly.
Not much change there.

Amazing how this has gone from. What's different now for women > trans women in sports > predatory men.

There were many many predatory men in all previous decades and none of them dressed in women's clothing. I have been sexually assaulted in the street and in a car park in the 70s and 80s and neither of them were dressed in women's clothing. I have been raped by an abusive partner and he was not dressed in women's clothing either.

Why do you have to derail everything? You are belittling the attacks committed by predatory men who present as men for your own agenda. Disgusting.

I don't think things have changed as much as we'd like to think. The only real stand out difference is the changes in employment laws around discrimination, maternity leave etc meaning greater opportunities in the work place/professions for women. Page 3 pinups and nude calendars are all still very much alive and kicking, except these days they're called mobile phones. In fact, the stuff accessible on phones and computers is a trillion times worse than any Playboy calendar. Misogyny in politics, healthcare and the entertainment industry (to name just a few) hasn't diminished as much as you'd expect in the decades since I first started work (1970's) and men still get away with degrading women under the guise of "banter". The police force is still full of sexual predators, only now it's even easier for them to link up through WhatsApp etc.

I was thinking about how different my mothers life was to mine at the same ages
she wasn’t able to leave a marriage that she didn’t want to be in - no way would she have been able to support four children alone plus we lived with her parents - you weren’t able to rent/ buy or have a credit card without your husbands permission!!
I had a job that meant I was able to earn enough to leave and be ok on my own
I have much more freedom than she did

also sexual harassment was just ‘banter’ when I started work. - if you didn’t like it you were ‘too sensitive’
I remember a boss making crude jokes about women’s underwear and rating them on how good he thought they were in bed- yuk

There were predatory men 500, 100, 50, 20 and 5 years ago. That hasn't changed so is not the topic of this thread.

But it is a change that boys & men, predatory or not are now in certain places allowed to just declare 'I am a girl/woman' and some people open the doors to women's sports, changing rooms, prisons, etc to them.

30 years ago schools wouldn't have called boys she behind their parents back and let them participate in girls sports.

I think women are expected to do too much now. Have a career, run a home and family. More single mums as dads don’t feel the same obligation to support the family now women can work full time in better paid jobs.

We get paid more and have more opportunities on one hand but on the other it’s swung too far and men aren’t stepping up to do their share of what was once ‘women’s work’.

I'm 40.

I think it's far from perfect but there's more recognition of what women face. A couple of instances I remember which are better now:

I had a job in my late teens where the guys had a list rating the girls. Everyone just rolled their eyes and/or felt a bit uncomfortable. Nowadays they'd all be called in by HR for that.

I had to deal with heavy, slightly painful periods with very little help and info. I had GPs tell me conflicting things. Now there's much more info on the internet about the issue.

When I started work in civil engineering in the mid 90s, dealing with periods on site was difficult at times, to say the least.
Then we got welfare vans with toilets.
Now the welfare van toilets have sanitary products and serviced sanitary waste bins in.

My siblings and I are in our 40s. Our mother had to give up her career once she got married

Contraception became available
Introduction of maternity leave (although I remember when it was only 12 weeks)

Decent maternity leave so you can continue in a career. When I first qualified the majority of women in my profession had no option but to give up. Anyone who wanted to continue , self employed, had to return within a few weeks in order to maintain an income, even if it was part time. One colleague worked until the morning she went into labour and was back at work the following afternoon. She had wages to pay so couldn’t afford to have time off.
I was lucky, since the maternity pay and leave (26wks) was introduced just before I had DS.
Employers couldn’t afford to let women take more than a few weeks so most were forced out of jobs.
My DM was from the first generation of nurses who were allowed to continue working after getting married in the late 1950s. Not my lifetime but not far off.
The introduction of the sex equality act changed a lot of things, but it was slow to be enforced.

I remember going for a job interview in 1987 when DD was exactly one year old and being asked why I wanted to work when I had a baby and when would my husband and me be planning to have another one.

That’s because we have amazing appliances to do most of the work. My grandmother would spend all day washing, using a hot tub and an electric mangle. Then another day ironing, no easy care fabrics were available.
My dishwasher and tumble dryer are controlled by an app and inform me when they have finished.
You can buy a selection of robots to vacuum and wash your floors. Airfryers and microwaves to cook convenience food, cheap take away and shopping delivered to your doorstep.
I hate it when women claim they have to work and keep house. Pre 1970s keeping house was a full time job. Now it’s just a battle to see who presses the button.
I was at work today but my dishwasher informed me it had finished the dishes. DH had obviously loaded it and pressed the button. Although it’s no different from 30 yrs ago when DH would do the washing up then announce he had done them. I’ve come to the conclusion that the dishwasher is male. DH will still take the credit.

What we have gained on the swings we have lost on the roundabout.

I'm 62. Apart from creepy old men in the workplace and builders wolf whistling on the street now coming under scrutiny, I think generally "things" are worse for women than when I was in my 20s.

@Angrymum22 that's a slightly narrow view. Yes there are more household appliances but many people don't have dishwashers let alone an app controlled one or robotic hoovers..

I was a teen in the 80s

If a young woman/girl got pregnant then often she was On Her Own.
If the bloke didn't want to know , he went . There was an attitude of "Well birth control is the woman's job"
There was no Child Maintenance chasing them .

And if there was more than one potential father .......... well lets not go there .
And if the woman wanted to keep the baby and he didn't ...she was on her own.

I had friends who got pregnant at school , there was a lot of judgement .

My DS is in his 20s and he knows if he gets a woman pregnant then he will be involved for life . Even if she wants nought to do with him. So consider your responsibilities young man.