On balance life isn’t harder for young women today.
I agree with all of your post bar this.
It IS harder, sorry. I acknowledge we probably deal with far less sexism (although violent pornography and incel culture is far more widespread among younger people than the older generations probably know), but things are much harder.
I was born in 1992, when I was a kid in a very average area, only a smallish minority of mums worked full time. I would say about half didn’t work at all, a quarter part time, and a quarter full time at most. Houses were ridiculously cheap - I found one of my childhood homes on rightmove the other day, they bought it for 250k in 2002, and it has just been sold recently by a new owner for 700k! This isn’t London, this is a 4 bed end of terrace with a nice but not huge garden in a middle class village not too far from Bournemouth.
Until you have tried to get on the ladder with the absolutely staggering house prices we have now, you just can’t comprehend what it’s like. It was the norm 30/40 years ago for a married couple to buy a ‘family home’ when they married with the anticipation of starting a family. So many people are just trapped renting or in flats as there’s no alternative. Housing has such an enormous impact on your life, your prospects, your potential to do anything, that living in a time when an average wage could buy a 3 bedroom house by itself is just a fantasy now.
Men are useless, we may not be catcalled as much but they don’t propose, they’re tight with their money, they kick the can of having kids so far down the road women are strung along for years (feeling particularly salty about this on behalf of 3 friends at the moment). They can’t do DIY, they can’t fix anything in the house, so as well as working AND doing most of the childcare we have to do all that as well. They’re feminised in an awful way and yet still toxically masculine in an awful way.
We have mega expensive tuition fees, Brexit, Covid, austerity, Russia all happening since I turned 16 in 2008. There have been no halcyon days that we can look back on fondly, it’s ALL been shit. No 1 thing has been easy bar Amazon Prime.
Social media is a curse which has sped up fashion and bombards us with comparison and expectation. Very easy to say ‘don’t take part’ but nobody is isolated from external forces and societal pressures. The ‘grooming’ we are expected to perform just not to look ill next to other women is massive and expensive (I don’t do it but understand why some feel under pressure to). A fashionable jacket lasts 6 months before it’s ‘passe’ and another one replaces it. I swear fashions used to hand around for a few years at least.
And finally our parents, who in many cases utilised a shitload of grandparent and relative support themselves, have fucked off (or they have in my case) and are sunning themselves abroad while we struggle. While I get they’re not legally obliged to help us, they ABSOLUTELY would expect support if they were unwell or needed it for some other reason.
Sorry but a bit of extra sexism and the days of 15% interest (which was still less expensive than trying to buy now, comparatively) just isn’t harder than now