Is being a woman better or worse now?

[Cheekypeach]

Than in, say, 1960 or 1970.

Inspired by the ‘support’ thread, my initial reaction is to say better, women working more financial independence etc.

But when I stop to think about it, is it really better this way? So many women I know are stressed juggling work & motherhood, there seems to be more pressure to look highly groomed, fast fashion, dating apps where women get treated like rubbish.

I know the answer isn’t a simple one as there are pros and cons to both, but what do you think?

@Georgeskitchen

I remember as a child in the 60s, there seemed to be more of a sense of community. Families lived close to each other and supported each other. Hardly any cars on the road; safer for children to play out. Very little anti social behaviour. More respect for the law etc The bad things (which didn't affect me as a child).....homosexuality was a criminal offence, domestic violence wasn't taken seriously, single mothers were pariahs etc etc so good and bad back then as there is now, I guess!!

I think this is a class view as well as a female one and it still is like this in some areas. However, I can’t see it as a positive - I can’t speak for the 60s, but I do think that while there may have been more of a sense of community, that came at a cost too. Intense interest in what you and everyone else were doing, intense pressure to conform, no privacy, the view that anything ‘different’ is being in some way uppity or having ideas above yourself. It would have me miserable and frustrated. I’m not especially introverted or prone to hiding behind closed doors but I like to be able to buy some toilet paper without the whole street knowing about it.

*better

I think it's much better, when you consider women needed a husband's permission for loans, mortgages etc. That for a long time you were expected to give up work if you had kids.

Violence in the home was just a 'domestic' in the eyes of the police and public, was a 'personal matter' and a husband could rape his wife. Still not saying things are great now, but at least it's understood it is a problem and most people don't think 'Well, she must have wound him up'.

Agree, the pill, and widely available abortion. Not being horrendously shamed and forced to give up a baby if pregnant out of wedlock.

Personally, I don't think we do children any favours by filling up their every waking minute with organised activities. It's important to develop self-reliance and your own interests, and to learn to cope with occaisonal boredom, how to organise yourself, how to get on with all sorts of other people, and how to fight your own battles (within reason)

I actually agree @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
However, our whole society operates in a way which doesn't allow this. If I didn't coordinate my dcs life and activities they'd cure their boredom by staring at screens. No one let's their children play out by themselves so you can't send your DC out. If you leave your dc in a car to pop into a shop, or let them walk home from school at a certain age, you'll have people queuing up to vilify you or even report you!

I think its somewhat harder now, but I think that it's harder to be an adult in today's age.

In the 60s/70s when a woman's place was considered to be at home, and a man's was in work, and a house could be bought on a modest salary.
Now, it seems like women and men are both expected to work full time, full time hours seem to be longer than they were in the 60s and 70s.
And not only are women expected to earn as much as the men, were still the ones judged on the state and temperament of our kids, state of the home and are expected to have a meal on the table each night.

Womens jobs seem to have doubled in the past 40 or 50 years.

Yes we have additional rights, yes we have certain things that have become better, but our lives have become harder.

It's much much better, but it's still not good enough

Opportunities were less workwise - not in the actual sense - I suppose you could become an engineer or whatever male dominant career but no one told you that, in fact every girl in my class became a teacher (two super brainy became doctors), I didn't want to teach so joined the nhs - but these jobs weren't particularly well paid then. Only ones who went to uni were the doctors as the rest of us went to teacher training college or nursing college.
I wan't my time over again - uni and a well paid interesting career. And a husband that does lift the occasional finger.

Overall it is much better to be a woman now than when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. There is less sexism, women can have satisfying careers at a good level and there is less sexism in public life. Marital rape was legal up until 1992, the tax system up until 1990 effectively judged a woman’s income to be part of her husband’s and many professional bodies had a category of “lady member” for the wives of the men who did the proper work. Some challenges have however increased. Access to very viscous pornography has led to more misogyny than I thought possible and somehow the new normal for many women is work and childcare combined. Most surveys show women still do most of the domestic duties with men doing proportionately a lot less. There is still much to do and sometimes I do feel progress is slower than it should be. I could not walk home safely as a teenager and now in my 50s this is still the same….

I guess what I’m getting at is whether the issues around in the 1970s are still here, just with a side portion of extra stress dressed up as ‘opportunity’. I don’t know many women who wouldn’t want to cut down their hours or give up work altogether, at least while their kids are little. But it seems we’ve gone from not having any career prospects to being worked incredibly hard with little say in the matter, plus our domestic ‘duties’.

Plenty of women are SAHMs or work part time, and couples plan their household finances to enable it. If it’s unaffordable or they don’t want to compromise, they work full time. Just as women from poorer backgrounds have always done.

And as a woman who doesn’t want children (and we are estimated to be over 25% of women by 2040) I’m very glad that I get to benefit from those “opportunities” and am no longer bound by the 1960s expectation that I’ll get married and have babies.

My mum was a working single mum in the 70s and I think being a single working mum is better now. Not easier, but better. more options for quality childcare, more options for well paid work,, less stigma.
I wouldnt like to be a teenager now.

@Cheekypeach

Than in, say, 1960 or 1970.

Inspired by the ‘support’ thread, my initial reaction is to say better, women working more financial independence etc.

But when I stop to think about it, is it really better this way? So many women I know are stressed juggling work & motherhood, there seems to be more pressure to look highly groomed, fast fashion, dating apps where women get treated like rubbish.

I know the answer isn’t a simple one as there are pros and cons to both, but what do you think?

Some things are better, much has been lost.

@Cheekypeach

I guess what I’m getting at is whether the issues around in the 1970s are still here, just with a side portion of extra stress dressed up as ‘opportunity’. I don’t know many women who wouldn’t want to cut down their hours or give up work altogether, at least while their kids are little. But it seems we’ve gone from not having any career prospects to being worked incredibly hard with little say in the matter, plus our domestic ‘duties’.

Sahm are now looked down on the way single mothers used to be, and not just by men

I'd like to have been born in the 60s. I don't think people are very nice as a whole now

They were f**king awful in the 60s
Especially if you were one of the immigrant families.

Our front door used to get kicked in regularly
by the police because if someone had been broken into then it had to be an immigrant family responsible

I was shouted at regularly because I was obviously up to no good as I had parents who were “foreign”
Actually my mother wasn’t but why let the facts get in the way of a bit of racism

Part of the problem is the loss of 9-5 jobs in your local town. People could leave school and be a cashier in the bank, be a secretary in a local office. Work in a factory. And then could work their way up.

These jobs have gone - people mostly have to commute which adds so much to the day.

@Cheekypeach

Not to mention the new belief system of ‘gender identity’…

Oh give it a rest!

I think it's better.

If you think it is worse you definitely weren't there.

@Spookytooth

Part of the problem is the loss of 9-5 jobs in your local town. People could leave school and be a cashier in the bank, be a secretary in a local office. Work in a factory. And then could work their way up.

These jobs have gone - people mostly have to commute which adds so much to the day.

Yes. Until quite recently, you could leave school with no qualifications at all and still find a job fairly easily. It wouldn't be a very interesting or responsible job and it would be low paid, but it was work and you could just about be self-supporting, and once in a job you had a good chance of staying in employment until you retired.

Along the way, you had an excellent chance of getting a council house at an affordable rent, and if you did climb the ladder and get a better paid job you could buy a small house or flat with a mortgage that was also affordable if you budgeted carefully.

Also, the gap between rich and poor was less than it is now because taxes were very high and city and top management salaries weren't as obscenely out of kilter as they are now.

Social mobility is much worse now than it was in the first 30 years or so after the end of WW2. Your chances in life depend far more on your family background than they did back then. I never thought in my lifetime we'd move so rapidly from a position where most of the population could afford to buy their own home to the reverse, and so many people in thrall to private landlords and uncontrolled rents. We've gone backwards in these areas.

(Admittedly, a lot of the above applies more to men than women, whose chances were always a lot more limited.)

@OneTC

It's much much better, but it's still not good enough

Yeah this.

Heaps better but along way to go.

Well if you are talking about women worldwide, whilst there is still FGM, forced marriage, females not allowed education, its still as bad as it ever was.

If you are specifically talking about this country, I think women are going through a period where as a sex class, we are hated.

Maybe job opportunities are better, but in terms of our health and wellbeing, nah. It's shite.

I'm not talking about me personally either. But womanhood.

@blyn72

Speaking as a woman of 72, I would say it is a much better world in which to be a woman now than when I was young.

My mum is 82 and has said the same.

Not sure the rest of us are able to comment, though I think it's better now than it was when I started out as a student and a husband could still rape his wife.

@Onionpatch

My mum was a working single mum in the 70s and I think being a single working mum is better now. Not easier, but better. more options for quality childcare, more options for well paid work,, less stigma. I wouldnt like to be a teenager now.

Is being a single mother better now?- ok the stigma has gone (kind of), but less chance of a council house, unaffordable childcare, people now move away and people have to work longer so no family to watch your children whilst you work, most flexible jobs ie. Shop work has been automated.

I'd say better. Based purely on the fact that it's actually illegal now for a husband to rape his wife or beat her. Things that were legal when my parents got married.

My mum got asked from a job for wearing trousers. She was not allowed to study certain subjects at school. When she got married, she got asked to leave her job (she didn't BTW and her life was made difficult until she left to have a baby).

There is a long way to go. It has only been in my working life (last 20 years) that our local authority did away with 'bonus payments' for men doing jobs at the same scales as females. I realised the other day I'm the only female on my team who is full time. But there has been progress at least. I'm 42 with two kids and working. My mum wouldn't have been able to do that.

When my Mum was at school in the 1960s even the brightest girls at the grammar school all went off to train to be secretaries (not that there's anything wrong with that just that they couldn't go higher). Hardly any women went to uni and a female boss in business was almost unheard of.

A generation before that, her mum was given her notice when she got married.