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

[HavefunGomadLivingInTheCity]

Been trying to fond some documentaries about life as a woman in the UK 100 to 150 years ago, not really found anything yet
Alot of things around the 70s

I never knew my maternal grandmother and paternal one didn't talk much
So I don't know much about my previous generations
Guess mothers day got me thinking

So have you seen any good documentaries about this..?

Or what things have you seen change

I'm late 40s and I remember when the law changed so you can't rape your wife, and I remember my mum saying it was nonsense

My mum worked full-time and did everything at home so think she got a pretty shit deal
But I see alot of friends and peers doing this
Certainly don't think things should go back or anything perhaps so much has changed and things are struggling to change at the same pace

I started work in the 1980s. Every Friday the office would empty as people took a long pub lunch. I was never asked and thought that people didn’t like me. Then I realised that the other 2 women in the office never got invited either . That would never happen now

I was in sixth form then too, but luckily in my all girls school they really encouraged stem subjects and expected everyone to go to university. My friend who was recommended to take a secretarial course was going to Art college, considered a guarantee of being jobless, hence the advice to get other skills.

I was born in 1958, failed the 11 plus but got enough points to get to a Technical High School. In my time there (1969-1974) there were three types of schools:- Secondary Modern (mainly did CSE's), Tech High School (did CSE's and GCE's) and High School (GCE 'O' and 'A' Levels).

The expectations were as follows📧

Secondary Modern - work in a factory or shop
Tech - office work
High School - Teaching, University level qualifications.

Did it work out like that? Hell no! I knew many girls from Secondary Moderns who went on to have great careers, went to Uni etc., exactly the same as the Tech and High School Girls. I'm glad the 11 plus was abolished - it patently didn't work.

If you became a single parent (as I did in 1977) you were expected to go on benefits and stay there. I got maintenance for my child, and once she was a year old I scandalised the estate I lived in by getting a full time job after being lucky enough to get a council nursery place for her. Three years later I found out I was paying too much tax because my solicitor had got the maintenance paid in respect of me instead of my child, and it was taxed via my pay. When I asked him why he'd done that he said it was because he thought I'd just stay on benefits. Shocking stuff!

I'd say by the mid 70's there was no longer an expectation that children would be given up for adoption (my sister had a child in 1974 and kept her baby, our neighbour had a child in 1972 and was forced to put hers up for adoption. She never got over it, and she wasn't the only one I knew who this happened to.

Biggie was in 1975 when the Sex Discrimination Act became law, and made it illegal for financial institutions to discriminate on the grounds of sex or marital status for employment, education and financial services. We could get mortgages in our own name without permission from a husband. The banks and building societies could no longer ask for a husband's signature to give permission. This was so freeing, a wonderful piece of legislation that really did make a difference - I bought my first home in 1980.

Married woman's stamp was abolished in 1977. Women tended to pay the lower stamp because it was a little bit more in your pay packet. They did not understand how this would devastate the amount of state pension they received in later years.

I was brought up in the 60s and 70s in a left wing politically active family, where feminist discourse was the norm and I was encouraged to pursue the things that interested me rather than be expected to conform to society's stereotypes

However.....
At my very first chemistry lesson in secondary school in the mid 70s, our new teacher calmly explained to the whole (mixed) class that he didn't think girls had the ability to do science. It never occurred to any of us to complain about this. But I decided then and there that I wanted as little to do with the sexist git as possible and I definitely wasn't going to do science O-Levels (which was rather unfair on the Biology and Physics teachers, who were lovely). So I went down the arts route and ended up as an accountant. My best friend decided to grin and bear it as she really wanted to be a scientist - she now has an Oxford PhD in a science subject and has recently stood down from a Head of Department role at a Russell Group uni. My other friend had a similar reaction to me, but when she got to sixth form college she did A-Level Chemistry from scratch and ended up as a Pharmaceutical scientist.

So up yours Mr Williams!

Same school - as was normal for then girls did domestic science and needlework and boys did woodwork, metalwork and tech drawing. Except that the boys also had taster sessions in the girls' subjects, but the girls never got the chance to try out the boy's subjects.

Trivial compared to these really interesting and shocking examples but unisex trainers becoming the acceptable default for school uniform is one good change I've noticed. From the silly flower appliquéd, buckled 'girl' shoes that aren't compatible with rain to the heels we all mangled our feet in because we wouldn't be seen dead in flats... Fashion and school rules, at least in this case have caught up with equality and practically.

In the Easter issue of Good Housekeeping there is an article titled....We were groomed by our teacher so why did we feel like the ones on trial.
Ive found the article on press reader so will link it here but here is something i learned from said article that i didnt know.
One of the women Kerry is campaigning for a change in the law which meant that in the nineteen eighties a prosecution for sex with a girl under sixteen had to be brought within twelve months There is NO similar statute of limitations for boys.

Article here....https://www.pressreader.com/uk/good-housekeeping-uk/20260401/281681146350019

I'm not in the UK and one of my friends did technical drawing in the 1970s (I think she was the only girl in the class).

Sexual violence against women and girls is on the road to being decriminalised.
I marched for various women’s rights in the 70s and fear that we are going backwards.
A British government has refused to protect half of its citizens from mass rape by Islamic men.

Tbh I think this is why I think it's disappointing that so many women in this day and age (and often very well educated ones) still seem to be desperate to give up up their careers once they've had a baby.
Women were, until relatively recently, not given the option to even gain an education or establish a career.
So now we can, why throw it away?

What strikes me is how backward we’ve gone on gender stereotyping.

when I was a child in the 70’s mums were told that children should not be restricted by sex- so boys should be be given dolls, girls toy cars etc. I remember a lot of conversations amongst my mums friends- a doll! They usually compromised on action men and the like.

i was told I could do anything or be anything. I wore a lot of brown, red, green, navy. Pink wasn’t popular, or pastel in general. I had short hair and climbed trees. Make up on men, Boy George, glam rock.

then somewhere in the 90’s we went back to pink and girly and dolls are for girls/gay. If boys like shiny things and dressing up they can’t be boys. Women giving up work and becoming reliant on men, even though the law has changed now and getting married isn’t a meal ticket for life.

Perhaps a bit niche, but in 1970 all Cambridge colleges (for undergraduates, at least) were single-sex. There were three women's colleges but many more men's ones. AI tells me that In the 1970–71 academic year, the university of Cambridge had 7,346 male and 1,091 female undergraduate students.

My girls' grammar school sent one girl to Oxford and none to Cambridge in the seven years I was there. I still remember her name: although she was several years ahead of me it was such a big thing. The boys' grammar sent several boys to Oxford or Cambridge each year.

Were the boys seven times more suited to that university education than the girls?

A small thing, but indicative of general attitudes I suppose is that when I was a medical student in the 80s before we started our first clinical attachments we had a lecture on expected behaviour on the wards and one of the slides stated "Lady medical students will NOT wear trousers."
Even in theatre we had to wear dresses. A few years later when I was a junior anaesthetist I was posted to a hospital where women were still not supposed to wear trousers in theatre and there were only dresses provided in the female changing rooms. My friend and I were appalled by this and we started sneaking into the male changing room and taking scrub suits. I was quaking the first time we did it - I really thought we might get sacked. We didn't, but we did get shouted at by several people. But we stuck at it, and a couple of male colleagues joined in by collecting up the smallest sizes in the morning and passing them over to us. More and more wonen started wearing them. One day we went into our changing room and discovered new shelves stocked with trousers and tops including smaller sizes than the ones we'd been getting from the men. The theatre manager had given in at last and ordered women's sizes. Nothing was ever said to us but we knew we'd won! OK, we're not likely to be recognised as anaesthesia's answer to the Pankhursts but I do like to think that my friend and I improved things for female staff a little bit in that hospital and maybe gave some a bit more confidence to challenge every day sexism.

I was born in 1952. My experience of educational opportunities was OK - so some of the previous posters must have been unlucky.
I went to an all girls school but only 4 of us wanted to do science A-levels. School said they couldn't spare a teacher for so few so we enrolled at the nearby technical college - this was 1968. I went on to do a BSc and then an MSc in Space Physics - that was 1973. I always wanted to be an astronaut.
Anyway I ended up being a Nuclear Physicist - started that in 1976.
Women's Lib was a big thing when I was a teenager - also the Hippies - peace, love, mini-skirts. One of my female friends was an anti-war protester marching to the American Embassy (Grosvenor Square, 1968), another camped out at Greenham Common.
But I knew older women whose employers in the past would not take married women - if they got hitched they had to leave.
When I was little my mother wouldn't go in a pub - they were for men and women of loose morals. On the other hand, I think because school leaving age was much younger (14 for my mother), teenagers had more freedom. She and her sister went on holiday alone from home in Devon to Blackpool when they were 16, for instance, in the 1920s.
DH and I were both allowed by our parents to go off with friends - DH did a Youth Hostel cycling holiday with 3 friends at age 12, at 14 he and the same friends went on a package tour to Switzerland. At 14 I want camping with my friends and also for a week at Butlins - no parents or other adults with us.

The biggest changes I've seen in women's lives are same changes that happened in men's lives. I was born in 60s.

When I left school in the early 1980s my mum was horrified that I wanted to become an accountant, she presumed I would be a typist, then a SAHM. I graduated with a degree in accountancy in the mid 80s.

Surely it’s personal choice. Sometimes as we go through life priorities change.

When I left school in the early 70's my mother wanted me to be a teacher ("just think of all those holidays !" she said). I could go to the local Teaching Training College (so I could come home for lunch) then get a job locally and live at home.

When I said I wanted to be a Physiotherapist and train at a hospital in a big city 35 miles away she nearly had a fit of the vapours.

5 years later I was qualified and working in a practice treating sports injuries 🙂

Women's football is now taken seriously. (Helped, of course, by the Lionesses being a better side overall than the England men's team).

This is a serious comment BTW.

I was born early 60s. One of the biggest changes I have seen is women being treated as equals in the workplace. I can remember when I was around 27/28 and was working for a large company and went for promotion and was passed over in favour of a man a couple of years younger and less experienced. I asked for feedback and was told the reason I was overlooked was because I was married and given my age was likely to be having children! I will not repeat my reply!

The word woman being erased by the NHS in relation to maternity and health issues.

In 2001, I was told to take my wedding ring off before going to milk round interviews by the sole female uni lecturer in a very male-dominated industry.

It made no difference, the well-connected lads got the 2nd interviews & jobs, despite pretty poor grades compared with me. Vocational degree, so no chance to get qualified without a job...

Turned out ok in the end but it would have been very different if I was a male applicant.

Wanted to join the police originally but too short. Would have been a WPC & I assume a more limited role.

Many fewer roles in the military for women plus different parades, iirc, because men carried guns. I found that out via a parliamentary question.

I think it's harder to be a tomboy now though.

I can remember the sex discrimination act coming in.

I went to girls' school, we had to do a lot of cooking and sewing for the first three years. No option to wear trousers even to walk to / from school.

I couldn't be an engineer because the school didn't offer 'boys subject'. I looked in to becoming a pilot, at the time BA (no other training in the UK) only recruited men leaving the RAF. Women were not allowed to fly in the RAF for a long time.

Women not allowed to wear trousers at work.

Adverts for a bank, I think Barclays, saying that if you worked for them a wedding ring would not hold you back.

Actually looking at adverts, print and video for the 70s and 80s can be eye opening.

Women who had a career in the armed forces could not have children, forces hospitals carried out a lot of abortions.

It's crazy to think women were only allowed to own own Their own house in1975, really not that long ago.

Well properly amd freely without needing a man's say so

In the very early 70s, I applied for a govt. dept. job that required languages and would need you to travel.

My application was turned down on the grounds that I was female - because ‘…you might need to drive a car.’

Admittedly I hadn’t yet learned to drive, but nothing about driving - or needing to be male! - had been stated in the blurb.

It was probably in the late 60s but I well remember my DM being absolutely incandescent after ringing the tax office about her rebate - only to be told ‘This is not your money - it’s your husband’s.’ 🤬🤬!