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

The biggest change for me hands down is that men can be women because they say so.

Things like flexible working, WFH and shared parental leave have in theory made it easier for women to keep up their career after having kids. Still very few men taking on the primary parent role though or even fully equal parent. Not many take up the 6 months paternity or even 2 months.

Agree with all the comments above about pressure on looks - it’s far far worse than it was back in the 1990s or 2000s. Also about having to be perfect at everything and the social media culture.

I personally never suffered sexual assualt or harassment aside from annoying drunk men on the night bus. I appreciate I was lucky though. Even if open harassment is less common and more frowned on, I think that’s offset and possibly outweighed by the negative effects of porn culture behind closed doors.

Trans… don’t get me started.

Overall I’m glad I grew up when I did and not now, and I’m sorry that my daughters are going to have to face new challenges I never did.

Absolutely this.

There has been some very significant progress since I was a child, growing up in Ireland.

Women in my country can now avail of contraception and plan their families.

Women in my country can now avail of abortions, although this is a very recent development.

Women can now get a divorce.

Women who get married aren't obliged to leave their Civil Service jobs.

Women are encouraged to go to college, pursue careers and become financially independent.

That's the positive stuff and I'm very grateful for the many women who campaigned for all of these things.

But there's lots of negative stuff too.

Men continue to murder women.

Men continue to abuse women in every way possible (physically, sexually, financially, emotionally). There isn't a day goes by when I don't read a story about a woman being raped or murdered. Or a child abuse case.

Social media didn't exist when I was a child. There would have been pornography in the form of magazines and videos. But social media has allowed pornography and images of child sexual abuse to go global in a way that simply wasn't possible when I was a child. And those files (videos or photos) are very difficult (impossible?) to eradicate.

A lot of women now work outside the home, compared to when I was a child, when most of the women were SAHMs. This is a positive thing. However, the majority of them also do more than their fair share of child rearing, housework and life admin. So life is probably a lot more stressful for them because they're juggling two jobs - their paid job and their unpaid job.

I’m 66. At school girls and boys playground were separate. Girls did sewing and cooking, boys did wood and metalwork. When I started work there was no maternity leave. Women just had to give up work. Groping and sexual innuendo was rampant in the civil service where I worked. You knew who to avoid!

My brother passed his 11plus and went to grammar school. When I was 11 it was scrapped in our city so although my parents could have asked for me to attend the same grammar school I was sent to the local comp and only expected to be a typist or work in a shop. I ended up with the better career in public service and my brother delivered bread for several years after dropping out of Uni before emigrating. He got a grant for Uni unlike now

Yep. And this is championed by a lot of women.

Only very shortly before I joined an airline as cabin crew, you had to leave if you got married, because your husband wouldn’t like you spending time away. Who would be cooking his dinners and ironing his shirts?
This was early 70s.

Then I remember my mother being absolutely incandescent after she phoned the tax office about the rebate she was owed. The bloke on the other end had told her, This is not your money. It’s your husband’s.’

This was probably late 60s.

Born in the 90s

Page 3 gone. It was normal to be age 11 sitting in the train and grown men looking at topless women.

Big bellies being acceptable to show. Before only very slim women could show their midriff now it seems acceptable for all.

Grooming being recognised. Before it was seen as normal for an older guy with a car to approach a girl and manipulate her. She used to be seen as being equally responsible as no forcible rape had occurred.

To me it feels like it's been one step forward two steps back. In my lifetime I've seen much more representation of women on tv (although older women seem to be represented less now than I remember as a kid in the 80's). Also I do think sexism and mysogny in the workplace are less common

However we've also the rise of readily available free porn, some of it extreme which seems to have worked it's way into being part of 'normal' sex. Men wanting anal, men wanting to choke women etc. I'm not saying some women don't want this, but that wasn't a regular part of sex before unlimited free porn. So much more is expected of younger women now in that regard.

But undoubtedly, the absolute largest step backwards has been women being subjected to transvestites entering their private spaces and if we dare to object you can risk losing your job. I can't believe it's gone this far backwards. I think it just shows that women haven't actually made any gains whatsoever.

I started teaching 25 years ago and was told it was not appropriate to wear trousers to an interview and I was quite shocked when I first saw it 14 years ago !

calling yourself “ Ms.” give off a strident lesbian feminist/union ( bad ) vibes 😄

my mum was on a separate and lower teacher pay just simply because she was a woman in the 1970’s

when we were asked to report behaviour I was warned that women were often honest about difficult classes whereas men did not admit to struggling so women were unfairly labeled as weaker and more likely to struggle , so I was asked not to report it upwards as this played into the negative stereotype, I found women to be emotionally supportive wearas men , shouted and took over if you asked for help

when I was of dating age there were all sorts of conventions which seem weird now. Men would walk on the outside on the pavement and sit on the outside seat on buses. They would open the car door for you to get in and out, pull your chair out for you to sit down in a restaurant. Men always paid for food and drinks on dates. You had to wait for a man to ask you to dance. It sounds weird now.

Although things were already much improved when I entered the workplace, after graduation, in 1981 - there were still a lot of issues that had to be overcome.

There was still an assumption that if you were female, you were there as a secretary, or a lowly member of staff who was there to make the tea/coffee.

One of the clients I worked with (I worked in advertising), didn't allow their female employees to wear trousers.

"Womens problems", like periods and menopause, are talked about so much more freely now.

Which acts were illegal only a few years ago ?

This is what I think, the generation putting their kids first were the ones whos parents didn't. I often think its because we're conditioned to put others needs above our own. ...and maybe my kids will be more selfish. I guess they already are....less people having kids ...and focusing on themselves.

Apologies for derailing the thread.
But I think all our rights we fought hard for are being eroded due to gender ideology. And we are worse off now...doing it all on the work and domestic front.

Buggery/sodomy. Offences Against the Person Act was repealed 1967 I believe in order to decriminalise male homosexuality. Prior to this a heterosexual man could theoretically be prosecuted for having anal sex with his wife.

Fgs they had to have a law about it to stop these bloody men
Bring it back

I think it included animals! Yes agree.

In the early 70s, before the Equal Pay Act I worked in an office where the female manager earned less than the male team she was in charge of. And everyone, including her, thought that was fine. After all, she had a husband to provide for her, so her wages were just pin money.
Also, I was the only female in a department at a well known airline, and was thus expected to get the teas and coffees for all the men.
If they saw me heading for the kettle or cafe they'd say "while you're there get me one". So I started taking my own coffee in a flask. Some of them felt so emasculated by having to get their own drinks that they'd rather go all day without.
Pillocks.

Oh, and the contraceptive pill was only available if you were married or engaged, so my friends and I had a ring we'd swap when it was time to go to the clinic.
And marital rape only existed after 1991, so too late for me to complain about.

When I was a kid at primary school in the 80s, you still asked 'What does your dad do?'; the assumption was mum doesn't work. That was changing by the late 80s/early 90s. (NB, was at very middle class schools, aware more working class mums would probably have been working)

When I was a teen and in my 20s, people were still talking about women breaking into the workplace/into management; a few years ago I attended a very interesting talk by a woman who was one of that first generation to break into senior positions in real estate and she made point that young women's role models were no longer women like her, more their peers who were running side hustles and doing interesting things. So we're moved beyond a time when it was all 'Wow, women in the workplace!' to where it is normal and expected.... still progress on management to be made.

Yes. My GP checked if I was engaged!

Women now have good maternity leave, and sexual harassment in the workplace is mainly a thing of the past. Having my arse pinched and slapped as a 17 year old and having to laugh about it wasn't fun. Women, in general, are more protected by the equality act.

However, men still rape, hurt and kill women. Stalking has never been so easy with the technology available now. Social media and porn normalises things that wouldn't have even been common knowledge prior.

Girls grow up thinking that they need to be injected, primped, adjusted. Natural beauty is no longer a thing. Be this shape, be tiktok or Instagram perfect, have this look, that look.

Be all things to all people. Perfect house, perfect kids, full time professional job, where your husband "helps" with the kids and the housework (oh isn't he good, babysitting, so you can finish that report?)

It's very much swings and roundabouts. Changes good and bad. I was born in 1970.

I think that while legislation has changed, not everything has changed with it. It's over 50 years since equal pay was made law, but it's something I have never been able to take for granted with my direct male peers, despite me usually being the better qualified one, and at least as good as them, if not better in some cases. There should be much more openness about pay - why, this long after it became law, do we still have to fight for it, in any workplace?

Many men think as long as they're not actively groping you by the printer, then they've done their bit - and of course, that shouldn't happen, and still does. But it's also how much harder women have to work to progress. I am in a particularly male-dominated area of IT, and in my 50s, this is the first time I've had a woman as my line manager. I have often still been the only woman in the room, and I don't see a pathway. Yet plenty of men who are neither particularly technically able nor skilled managers get to progress. I am so tired of having to outperform my male peers just to be seen as equal.

And men should definitely be picking up more of the work at home. Some do - but it should be normal, rather than stand out behaviour to be remarked on. (Not an issue I deal with, as I live alone, but many of my friends, and threads here.)

Obviously it is good that we have legislation around many things making us equal in pay, tax, credit, mortgages, etc, but in a lot of areas of life, attitudes still need to catch up. Men need to stop justifying why it's okay for women in a particular situation when they wouldn't make the same argument for men.