What did the Boomers ever do for me?

[Nomama]

In the interests if balance, you understand!

I shall start with the Ford machinists:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_sewing_machinists_strike_of_1968

Equal Pay Act 1970

My thanks to you, Baby Boomers. Without you I couldn't have earned the same honest day's pay as the man working next to me. Hell, I couldn't even have got the job in the first place.

Now this generation needs to thoroughly break the Glass Ceiling!

Sorry - AIBU to ask....?

I knew I had forgotten something

Sorry but I'm of the opinion the boomers have screwed over my generation and no amount of 'good' they've done will ever counterbalance that

So, so much. The 1960's and 70's were a time of enormous social and political change. Certainly in the UK. The introduction of the pill, the Abortion Act 1967 and The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 all kickstarted women's emancipation and the Second Wave.

The decriminalisation of homosexuality in the late sixties too. Brave people standing up to years of traditional establishment beliefs and changing society, giving us opportunities we don't even really think about now, things we take for granted now and consider a right. It wasn't all about sitting back and taking.

That's not really the spirit is it!?

Also the baby boomers pushed for gay rights and changed attitudes to mixed marriage,single parenthood....the world was a very different place when they were kids. How exactly have your generation been "screwed over" Roasting ?

Yes, the baby boomers made hay whilst sun shone but they also did good. Huge good.

It's all too easy to blame the generation before and pout and say "it's not fair" but will our children say the same of us when we've drained the fossil fuel reserves dry or accessed all of the welfare pot "we're entitled to"? Don't all generations essentially make the best of and enjoy what is available? I'm not saying we should cancel our benefits or turn off our central heating but more that it's easy to point the finger of blame at other generations and not look to closely at what sort of impact your own might be having on the next.

Good thread, nomama

Roasting in the spirit of the thread... what, specifically, did the Boomers do to screw you over? The thread could easily allow for negatives too... but you can't just sulk. You have to explain your reasoning.

It is that blanket assertion without clarification that made me start the thread in the first place.

Sorry, just spotted a typo in my post, should be "too closely" .

You are immediately forgiven, indeed, on my thread, such typos are simply not seen or heard

Our major contribution was that we questioned and challenged views policies and attitudes that had seemed set in stone for generations.

While collecting signatures from women at school gates for petitions in support of what became the Equal Pay Act, I was several times told that they wouldn't sign because their husband would disapprove or that they wouldn't sign until they had asked their husband's permission.
I don't think you would ever hear that response these days.

Sadly, AllAlone, I don't think you'd find many at the school gates asking, either.

I teach 16 - 19 year olds and I haven't heard a political view in years. When I was their age I was at Greenham Common, joining Greenpeace, narrowly missing the Battle of the Bean Field.... I was politically active and aware and trying to get my voice heard. I believed my mum when she said that I could be anything, do anything and no man was better or could gainsay my ambitions.

I was the in-betweener generation that tried to live up to the legacy of the women who went before. I happily experienced being a teen ager, something that was just within my parent's experience, but not my Nana's. I went out looking for work as a single woman, lived on my own, got my own bank account, savings and pension plan, demanded more money, better work, got a mortgage that just about included my salary and was always very aware that I was living this life because of what had been done before.

I think we maybe struggle to give the boomers credit for that because when you engage them in conversation nowadays they often have rather unreconstructed viewpoints on women/gays/foreigners etc.

Farage is technically a baby boomer. I am not giving him credit for the Equal Pay Act, y'know what I'm saying?

It was an important step.

The Dagenham workers weren't generally baby-boomers though.

If you look at this article www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1310482/The-Dagenham-girls-Meet-friends-pioneering-fight-equal-rights-inspired-new-film.html the youngest of the four they talked to was born in 1936.

Did I miss the irony again?

Bigoted views aren't restricted to boomers though, are they? Some of the views I hear from 19-25 year olds on a daily basis (FE college) would even curl Alf Garnett's hair but they are not representative of a whole generation.

Don't think boomers brought in laws to end illegality of homosexuality or equal pay - boomer is post war 1944 gen onwards. They were all far too young. The generation before them did all of that.

To be fair, if you were born in 44 then you would have been 24 in 68 when the Machinists first walked out... plenty of the strikers at Dagenham and Halewood were far younger than the middle aged women like Rosie Bolan who were the figure heads, shop stewards etc.

And the laws passed were voted through by Boomers, they were the voting population at the time. So, yes, the pervious generation set it up and the post war generation saw it through. Or do you just want to be sure that the boomers are leeches and totally ignore The Second Wave etc?

The National Women's Liberation Conference, protests at Miss World, the Rape Crisis Centre, Spare Rib and on and on. And that's just the women...

What has this generation done to further such causes? Where is the politicisation of today's youth?

Boland apologies!

The ones that have screwed us over are the politicians and those that voted them in an continue to do so.

I don't remember making hay while the sun shone, but I know I've worked hard all my adult life.

I was a campaigner in support of the Equal Pay Act, so I can confirm that the Boomers were very much involved.
Also with the establishment of refuges for women suffering violence, many of which sadly are still required today.

Good thread.
I'll never forget being 14 and watching Miss World being disrupted live on TV. Bob Hope completely lost for words, marvelous

Reclaim the Night, Leeds mid 70s, when the establishment view was that the Yorkshire ripper was 'only' murdering prostitutes and that you were 'asking for trouble' if you went out on your own after dark.
www.reclaimthenight.co.uk/index.html

Replies already illustrate the difficulty of lumping any generation all together-there are people with both progressive and right wing views in every generation.
That said the baby boomers in general did challenge many power differentials in society that had previously been taken as read.
Roasting-I would like further explanation of your assertion that the baby boomers have "screwed over" the younger generation.
I am very aware that employment issues and housing are huge problems for young people-but could you explain how this is directly the doing of baby boomers?

Well the boomers always have been good at taking credit for the sacrifices of others.