To think woman don't have it better now?

[firstbabyworries]

Had a debate last night after watching a programme about how in history woman have been treated hideously. Husband said it's much better now. I largely disagreed.
The percentage of rape convictions is frightening. If it gets to court, (which it hardly ever does because who would believe you anyone, did you lead him on, where revealing clothing) it's just your word against his, who would ever believe a woman eh.
The rights to abortion in the US have changed, woman have no autonomy over their own body.
Donald bloody Trump! Need I say more?!

There are just tons and tons of ways life is so much harder for woman. Maybe because it's spoken about more now people think it's better. Maybe it is, maybe my judgement is clouded, the first two points are incredibly close to my heart so I might be talking rubbish!

It did get
Better but the internet is now making it worse for us.

I am always taken aback by posts appearing saying "I want a girl' or "gutted to discover I'm having a boy".

I always think, why on earth would you want your child to be born at an immediate disadvantage in life. You should want them to be born male for their sake. I'd love to have been born Male, my life would be so so different (in a positive way).

I certainly feel that I have more choices available to me then my Grandmother or generations before her.

However, she was happy with a small life- she barely liked leaving her home and her family unit were everything to her. However she also had to work as her husband died and she was working class.

But now the expectations on women seem to much.
I mean expected to work full time whilst still doing the majority of house work and childcare ( because most women do let’s be honest)
Seen so many posts on here from women who are just burnt out from constant demands on them from every day life.

In most ways life is much better than it was when I was a child 50 years ago.

However - as a teen in the 80s I did not have to deal with the crap from social media, especially influenced by teen boys’ use of porn. That seems to be a huge problem now, and very damaging.

I was a teen under Thatcher’s government - and whatever our views were on her policies, none of us doubted that a woman could run the government. I actually think that in some respects there is more sexism around now - more pressure to look a certain way, have sex in certain ways - to please men, and I worry for young women.

Sorry OP as this will sound harsh but your first post really irritated me. Yes, there are still things that need to be improved but overall we (women) live in a world that our ancestors could only dream of and that they fought for. I am talking about women living in the western world and not about the countless women in other countries who still live in the same oppressive societies of old. I think blanket statements such as “it’s not better at all” cause a lot of damage because they will irritate the ones who we need on our side to make further changes: men.

The whole your word against his and no one believes a woman thing is questionable if it's just on word. Our legal system says innocent until proven guilty, so if we're only going on word and no solid evidence then yes, we can't convict anyone. I can't accuse you of beating your children without proof etc imagine how crazy our law system would be if that were the case.

As for Roe V Wade all that did is let the individual states decide their own laws based on voting. You speak about the bodily autonomy of the woman but not the millions of babies aborted over the 2nd trimester in the US. What about their bodily autonomy? I can sympathise with someone's outcry for bodily autonomy when that includes killing another innocent human life. The bodily autonomy for the woman stops at sex and contraception, in the US 98% of abortions are from consensual sex with over half of them not even using contraception. I think we should take a step back on this topic and really look at the facts.

Im sure this comment will be deleted!

My grandmother had babies that died because it was pre NHS and she couldn't afford a doctor. She wasn't allowed to vote until the law was changed when she was in her 20s.

My mum had to leave school at 14 to earn money. She had to leave her job when she got married. She gave birth to full term stillborn children because there were no scans. She worked in menial jobs although she was intelligent because she'd never had the chance to get any qualifications.

I consider myself very fortunate as a woman today.

Things are definitely better now. Take off your rose tinted glasses and step out in the real world for a bit. Rape convictions are low yes, but women can earn their own money, own their own houses, get at least 50% in a divorce settlement.

Two things can be true - women in the U.K. are in a much better position than for pretty much all of history* AND there can be a long way to go.

*even if there was some time in distant when women had rights and power, we’d be too busy dying of childbirth, or mourning the babies that didn’t make it, to take much notice of it.

Also I’ve been doing my family tree and all their lives were miserable, but for the women even more so. (Prison for stealing coal. Babies dying. Widowed and destitute. Divorced and destitute. Leaving school because your father has died. Illegitimate children. Girls being sent to a reform school. Asylums. And that’s just what you can see on paper).

I definitely have a better life & more freedom than my parents & grand parents on both sides

Choice to have been university educated & Access to further education if preferred
Choice of career, with better working conditions, terms & conditions & benefits
Choice to own property & vehicles in my sole name
Private pensions
Savings in my sole name
Ability to vote
Access to travel locally & internationally
Access to information & knowledge via Internet
Access to labour saving devices
Access to contraception
Choice of religion
Choice of when to retire
There are also more freedoms associated with gender, sensuality, transgender, gay marriage than during the 1980s & 90s eg laws related to male homosexuality was 21, no gay marriage, no respect at work etc

I have travelled to lots of other countries & I am well aware that women in some other countries do not have the same freedoms that I have enjoyed & we have discussed this fact together.

I am fully independent, solvent

How many females could have said this 100 years ago ?

I agree with previous posters

I have looked at my family tree

One of my relatives had 10+ children, some of whom died during child birth

Women have many more choices today

We absolutely have it better.

But things aren’t perfect and we are still not seen as equal as we are to men.

Many women are also expected to work (which I fully support) but also still be the default parent and homemaker, which is where I think women have really got the shitty end of the stick.

Life will never be truly wonderful for women because men exist. Look I’m married and have a DS and also male friends. So I do not just outright hate men. But I worked in a male dominated industry for many years and also still take part in what is a male dominated hobby. They forget you are there sometimes. The occasional comment over many years. What some of these educated men really think, it’s an eye opener.

But if you are a woman in a developed country who is educated and understands what you can achieve then it’s the best time to be alive by far.

I'm 35 and I think things have improved for women since I was a teen/ at uni/ started in the work place. Teen - groped in a night club walking by sleezy older man it's a 'compliment' at uni I was sexually assaulted by some one who had a measure of power over a drunk 20yr old and was advised by the police to drop all charges. At my first job I found out all the male graduates had stated on more money than me.

We have a way to go, and there are certainly shitty things out there for women to deal with now. But my g.gran/ gran all worked and didn't get the recognision or pay the deserved. I was born a bastard god only knows what my life would have been like being born in the 1880s not the 1980s

But I do think things are improving. Or possibly I am just older/ wiser and don't put up with things as easily as I used to!

Marital rape was only criminalised in the UK in 1992.

In my home country, contraceptive law was only liberalised in the early 1990s, abortion was illegal throughout the 1990s, and divorce was only made legal in 1995. The GP at my university would not prescribe the pill on grounds of conscience.

The 1990s were no idyll for women.i do agree that the erosion of hard-fought women’s rights now by the arbitrary legalisation of men’s dysphoria is horrifying.

Back when the papers used to have Page 3 girls and do things like run Countdowns to young girls like Charlotte Church losing their virginity?

I’ve worked in HR since the 90’s and casual sexism and not so casual sexual harassment was rife in the 90’s. Senior management seldom took it seriously.

There were bugger all female CEO’s Ime. This is US data but illustrates it well. https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/fortune-500-ceo-diversity/

I loved the 90’s, it was a magical time to be alive but life definitely wasn’t better for women.

I think many things have improved but there still are some major issues to address: violence against women, low sexual assaults and rape convictions, women still being discriminated at work (especially when they go on maternity leave), porn affecting men's views of sex and relationships...

I think another major issues is that although women have gained rights, freedom and independence, we are still living in patriarchal societies that were not built to take into account women and their needs and were instead designed by men for men.

Many men have also failed to 'evolve' with the times and still hold the same old beliefs about women and don't quite see them as equal individuals.

Women definitely have it better now than in other periods. But just because things haven't improved doesn't mean they are right.

What a wonderfully written, vivid snapshot of women’s lives in your lifetime. Women’s lives have certainly improved although as you say there’s more to be done. I am so happy that I was able to stay at home with my young children without hardship. Although I appreciate that’s not what all women want , I’m glad I was able to do it without worrying about the bills.

I wasn’t talking about abusive relationships in the legal sense. I was talking, as you were from the context, about women in relationships where men are not pulling their weight in the house and with kids. I actually say this in my post.

And as I said in my post, women can’t make these men behave differently. It’s clear from many of those posts that women have tried really clearly to get the man to behave differently. Women cannot make men do anything, and the man’s behaviour is the man’s responsibility if he refuses to take his equal share of domestic work. Yes, it IS woman blaming to make women responsible for men’s poor behaviour. It’s shit enough being in a relationship like that without other women shaming you for ‘not getting him told’ . ( even though they have and he doesn’t care). Yes, that is making it all the woman’s fault. It very clearly is.

As I also said in my post, many women face real barriers to leaving due to inaccessible and unaffordable housing and the cost of living.

I think it is much better now actually but there's still a long way to go.

My mum had to give up work when she had children (I was born'81) simply because there were no childcare options and no flexible working policies. She would have needed my dad's permission to have a hysterectomy or sterilisation. She was discouraged from going to university because she "will end up just getting married and having babies". sexual harassment in the workplace was considered a fact of life. Although my dad did do housework & childcare society's opinion was that it was her job and my grandmother was horrified and amazed whenever my mum mentioned that my dad had done some ironing/cooking etc! Many other things

I am not talking about legal definotions, nor have I ever used the phrase 'not getting him told' in my life so I think you are confusing me with someone else.

I have spent years researching my mother's family history and have just completed a trilogy from my 4x gt grandparents in the mid 18th cent through to 1947. Let me tell you all about what life was like for my foremothers:

Susanna Fearnley married a Lieutenant of the Royal Artillery, Robert Carlile, in 1768. She had two babies in Yorkshire, and then they went to Newfoundland in 1773 with the army. She endured 2 winters in the bitter cold, along with all the other army wives, gave birth to another son, then the family was posted to Boston in 1775. They suffered appallingly through the siege of Boston, Robert was badly wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The baby, Benjamin, died of smallpox during the winter, and then Susanna died in childbirth because she was malnourished and the deprivation was terrible. The baby girl, little Ann lived only an hour.

Susanna and Robert's elder son, Thomas, and their daughter, Susannah, suffered terrible PTSD though it wasn't recognised as such back then. They were only 6 and 4 when their mother died and they were shipped back to England alone as their father was needed in America.

Thomas lost all his money in 1812 when his woollen mill in Pudsey burned down. His wife Mary tolerated his moods and the loss of money - though her family helped out. He killed the suitor of one of his daughters because he was beneath her socially. He got off. Mary had 9 children, and had lost 5 of them before she died. One of her daughters died in childbirth, one, along with her babies died of cholera in Hamburg. Her daughter Sarah fell in love with a maltster, but her father refused to let her marry him as he wasn't good enough for her. She had to run a school to make ends meet, and she and Uri waited 12 years until her father died before they could marry, in 1846.

Thomas' grandson, also Thomas, heir to a large estate in Herefordshire, shot the coachman when he was drunk/on cocaine because it was alleged he had been overworking at Oxford .He too got off. He married a Welsh girl, a miner's daughter, Mary Eliza, for her beauty and kindness and was an abusive drunkard, squandered all his money and left his wife penniless when he died at 55, presumably of disease of the liver. His only daughter had to go to work as a secretary, despite being raised a lady, was raped by the employer's valet while she was under the influence of her first encounter with champagne at Newmarket Ladies' Day, was forced to marry him because as an unmarried mother she had no employment future, and her child would be born a bastard. They parted at the registry office door. She raised her daughter alone, in dire poverty.

Three of the four sons of the drunk B.A.(Oxon) emigrated, or spend years abroad. Their mother Mary Eliza received two telegrams on the same day informing her that her two sons were missing in action at Gallipoli. One survived, to be nursed by my wonderful grandmother, who saved so many lives in Exeter and in Malta. But she couldn't vote despite her intelligence and her dedicated service to her country.
Granny was raised by her wealthy father in Exeter along with her two sisters who were forbidden to marry or to work. One, a talented artist was prevented from going to art school because it was far too bohemian. Her youngest sister had had measles as a young child was was rendered completely deaf and partially blind. They were to be the companions of their elderly parents, with no autonomy or life of their own. Granny escaped because of the war and the need for VAD nurses. One of their maids had a premature stillborn baby and in despair, left the body on the roof of the house. She was of course dismissed without a reference, lucky to have escaped being charged with the murder of the child. Who knows what happened to that poor girl.

There is so much more, illustrative of the truly awful lot that was women's up until the 1970s, when we first feminists began to protest the expectations of women and their total lack of personhood. I could go on and on...yes, even more than I have already, but really, the disadvantages girls faced in my youth were terrible.

Maybe I will. Go on and on, I mean. Wait for it.

Yes, I agree with this, I’m a bit younger but early 00’s office job I was walking up some stairs and had my backside smacked with a file a man who was quite senior was holding. Same man for work socials commented on my backside again and how he liked it. Lots of sexism that was indirect. I think there is quite a big change in the idea of the girlfriend as a possession, so someone to boss around and protect. I have been watching The OC with DD who is a teen and the main boy characters are just as above, it is the same in Dawson’s creek, girls are held to a higher standard and they are somehow lacking if they behave like the boys. I know they are dramas but I think that has perhaps not the case anymore, I know my teen son finds this an alien concept.