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

In 1970 I went to the GP to go on the pill - I was 18 and recently engaged. I had to make another appt and drag fiancé along to prove I was engaged to be married and not just some slapper. In 1972, 20 and recently married, I arranged for a local kitchen fitter to measure up in our new home. I was paying for it (independent savings) but blokea insisted on waiting until 'hubby was home' as he wouldn't accept my signature on the paperwork. When I went back to work at the council in 1987 after 2nd child started school, I was asked what childcare arrangements I had in place for their holidays and sickness and wasn't allowed to join the council pension scheme as my 'work commitment as a mother may be unreliable'. I accepted all the above because I knew my place 🤔

We both worked for a bank, that’s how we met. He was in the pension scheme, I wasn’t, he qualified for a mortgage, I didn’t.

Non binary identity is a change I’ve noticed. I had a hard time in the 80s as a teenager who preferred a non-feminine appearance. I expect I’d have adopted a non-binary identity if it had been a thing. I don’t think it’s progress though, more a narrowing of what’s acceptable for women and girls.

I'm in my 50s so I have seen it become illegal for a husband to rape his wife, and to pay a woman less than a man for doing the same or equivalent job. Both were long overdue.

When I started work I was given paperwork that displayed male and female pay scales for men and women working alongside each other on a switchboard doing identical work and identical hours. It's just the way it was and the vast majority of women did nothing about it.

When I was 18 I saw a job advert for a warehouse worker and went inside the agency to apply. The female assistant looked me straight in the eye and said "It's a male job, we cannot put you forward for it." This was 1977, two years AFTER the Sex Discrimination Act made that illegal.

When I was 19 I had got a job in a predominently male workplace. I was shunned by some, insulted by some, groped by some, but no man ever treated me as their equal. In the break rooms I was subjected to sexist pontifications every single day. That women should not be allowed to have my job, That I would never stick the job, that women would go to pieces in any emergency, that it was not worth training me as I would leave to get married, that I was taking a man's job, an imaginery man with a wife and kids to keep. On and on it went, day after day, month after month and year after year. One evening my work led me to be alone with a man, I was about 20 and he was about 50, and he cornered me, trapped me and pushed his face onto mine whilst groping me between my legs. When I pulled away and slapped his face, he said, "Oh don't pretend this isn't what you wanted to happen! Why else would you come and work in a MAN'S job?" I ran away, shocking and embarrassed, and ran off in tears. I didn't report it because it was his word against mine. He had worked there about 35 years and was a union rep. I had been there a few months. A few days later I was called in for interview: he had reported me for assaulting him.

I think in “official” areas of life we have done well and things have improved massively - equal pay, employment opportunity, finances, access to contraception and medical care, etc. Also visible representation in all walks of life.
But I think culturally, we have gone backwards a bit. I was a teenager in the 80s and we had everyone from Annie Lennox to Tina Turner to Alison Moyet to Sade to Madonna (love her or hate her) to look up to. All very different in the ways they presented themselves. Now all female pop stars seem to be half clothed by default and I don’t think that’s positive (and I know God I sound old). When you add in social media and porn, and that if you look anything less than uniformly feminine you must be trans, I think it closes down the ways you can be a woman in the world. I think we actually had more freedom of sexual and gender expression back then, whereas the whole trans thing, aside from being an active menace and threat in some circumstances, puts people in stereotypical boxes.
The most depressing thing is that the statistic on the number of women killed by men has stayed a steady 2 a week since I first learned to take notice of it 40 years ago.
The older I get, and I say this with the massive benefit of a supportive DH who does more cooking and housework than I do, I think men just don’t really “get” women - they just don’t understand and therefore can’t empathise with the female experience. I don’t mean the bodily experience of bearing children exactly, more that they don’t know what it’s like to exist in a world where you are prey, or collateral damage. It’s just not like that for them.

Around 2007 a director at my work place saw me with a colleague, and said "Hello, girls".
I was 44 and my colleague 33. Hardly girls! We were fairly senior managers too.
He was about my age.

When I started work for a large retailer in their head office we used to have a product review twice a year with the Chief Executive. All the products, except lingerie and swimwear, were shown on hangers. We had live models for swimwear and lingerie. Luckily for me they hired professional models and didn't expect junior staff to parade around, maybe surprisingly.
The Chief Executive's affair with a page 3 model was in all the tabloids. Five times a night. Mid 1980s.