To partially disagree with the argument about the 'second shift' made by some WASPIS?

[Carla786]

I know that workplace discrimination was rife for women who were born in the 1950s. Lack of childcare etc. I'm not disputing that.

I disagree partly with the argument made by some WASPIS that the 'second shift' (housework/childcare) they had to do while in paid work is important to their case.

For one thing, women in the 1970s & 80s were more likely to work less hours, work part-time. Men were more likely to work longer hours, do more overtime. Obviously this was fuelled by discrimination, lack of childcare that I mentioned above.

This ties to my other point : in the 70s & 80s raising children was often less labour-intensive than today, in the sense that children played out a lot more, ferrying to many activities was less common, parental input even in primary school was generally a bit less intense than expected often today. Studies (I'll link) have shown mothers (and fathers) spend longer with their kids today, whether or not they work.

So I suppose my point is: did that many WASPI age women experience a second shift as such?
I'm not disputing the misogyny of the era often but otoh if childcare was less labour-intensive than today, and many women were SAHM, part time, and less likely to work overtime, were a lot of women necessarily experiencing a 'second shift' in the sense of spending more hours working than their husband? In this equation, housework and childcare are counted as work, as well as paid work.

Oh well I misunderstand then as what I read is that the change was announced in 1995 , to be implemented over a 10 year period .

So someone who was 60 in 2010, would get their pension in 2011, someone who was 59 in 2010 got theirs in 2013, down to a 55 year old who got theirs in 2020 at 65. But in 2011 it was accelerated , so those younger WASPIs waited a few extra years.

If that’s not what happened, then please tell me where I got it wrong, as I am just going by google .

I don’t think they should, and I didn’t say that. I was just pointing out to pp who said housework wasn’t more difficult because everyone had mod cons. They didn’t. I don’t think they deserve compensation but they do deserve recognition that housework was far more difficult!

Just because not everyone could afford an appliance doesn’t mean it’s relevant.

My mother was born in the 1940s and we had all of these things during my childhood. I think perhaps you’re misremembering.

I don't want to disrespect anyone. I know many women did have to work very hard. The washing line was an issue for my own grandmother.

some of this is true for some households, but it wasn’t one single experience across the whole of the UK.

By the 1970s and 80s a lot of homes did have washing machines, fridges and decent vacuums – they weren’t as efficient as today, but it wasn’t the 1950s either. Central heating is a good example: plenty of people still didn’t have it, especially in older or poorer housing, (my family didn't) but many families did by the late 70s/early 80s. Same with cars – two-car households were rare, but one car for a bigger weekly shop wasn't uncommon. There were far more local shops top, so it wasn’t always multiple long treks with a trolley.

TV wasn’t exactly scarce either – three channels sounds tiny now, but there was children’s TV every day and many also played outside, read, saw friends etc. My mother certainly remembers watching loads of TV.

I am a WASPI, but I don’t agree with any of their arguments at all.
However, I don’t follow your arguments either. I did not return to work after my first child was born because we simply could not find childcare. There were no nurseries in our town. Nannies were usually live in ones and we didn’t have a spare room. To make up our income my husband took a job where he worked away from home and only came home for the weekends.
Our children did not play out in the street nor did any of their contemporaries. I think you are confusing this with when I grew up in the 1950s. Our children also went to lots of after school clubs, several a week.

It certainly depended on your income whether you had labour-saving devices or not. I had an automatic washing machine passed on to me by my mum when she had her kitchen refitted in the early 80s but a friend was still using a twin-tub in the 90s.

Not quite the same but my first (rented) TV was b&w it wasn't the dark ages but not far off. My first house still had single glazed windows when I bought it in '82. That caused more house work than double glazing.

Maternity leave became a thing in 1975, so actually from then on more women went back to work after having a baby and many of them worked f/t.

You seem to be confusing WASPI women with our mothers, although many of them worked f/t outside the home, too.

This one. Automatic washing machines were prohibitively expensive in the 70s and the freezer compartment of the fridge was just about big enough for a tub of ice cream.

Correct me if I'm wrong but if you were born in the 60s then your mum likely wasn't a waspi then right? Weren't they born between 50 and 60?
So they're not who OP is referring to.

I'm 31 and my mum was born in 58 and she was definitely not washing clothes by hand and we had many convenience dinners growing up. I'm not saying it was easier (though I think aspects were just as vice versa) just that I think you're thinking of the wrong generation.

We had a twin tub in the 70s and an electric mangle

We didn't have a tv or house phone until at least 1984.

My dad was a single parent though so I suppose he did " the 2nd shift" although we were expected to muck in after about age 7

We had a twin tub. No dishwasher. All meals cooked from scratch. Yes, we played out, but Mum was always at home. We went home for meals, (including lunch from school).

Mum took us to all appointments, and most households had only one car which the dad would use for work, so we’d walk or take the bus.

Thanks for the info, that's definitely true re income.

Re the TV, when did you have a b/w TV? My mum remembers one when she was young (early 70s)

Single glazing is hardly a rarity in the UK.

I was born in 1971. We don't have central heating, just storage heaters. We don't have a tumble dryer. We don't have a second car. I'll hopefully get my pension aged 67.

My mum (1947) had all of these and picked up her pension aged 60.

Silly to try to tie pension age to white goods in the 1980s - people have a wide range of circumstances now as then and pension age is rising because of life expectancy not as a punishment for our generation having it so easy.

I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes replaced by ill health benefits eventually. In some ways that would be fairer to let those who don't get to enjoy extra healthy years collect their pension earlier.

My mum is a WASPI, born mid 50s.
i don’t think the second shift argument is a particularly good one, the lack of notice and ability to plan financially a better one.
i also don’t think it’s helpful to compare who had it easier women ‘back in the day’ or women now. We parented in completely different worlds. Some things were easier for my SAHM (who identified as such but actually worked in a variety of low paid PT roles), somethings were harder. She definitely had more time than me, but they were always skint, she gave up work age 24 so she had almost no workplace pension, she had more children than me, all those mod con appliances were available but we couldn’t afford a microwave, it was the late 80s before we could afford a colour TV and possibly the 90s before we got a VHS. We did have a freezer and frozen pizza and frozen chocolate moose were consumed, but a lot of cooking from scratch too. We often didn’t have a car and moved out of catchment so she spent a lot of time ferrying us to school on the bus.

her world was just completely different to mine and I’m not sure it’s possible to say who had it harder. But I have a workplace pension and full national insurance contributions which is something she didn’t really have.

I grew up in the 1970s and my mother had a twin tub for washing clothes once a week and she had no tumble dryer. No central heating just a coal fire. She never had a freezer or microwave either so no frozen meals. During the winter of discontent she never even had electricity to cook a meal or heat water.

I worked full-time as did all my friends in the 1980s. I've no idea how many women worked part-time hours at that time.

Every generation thinks they're hard done to but with all the modern conveniences and even working full-time raising children today is easier than my mother had it.

I was born in 58, Hoover Keymatic machines were the ones people had in the 70s and 80s. Some people had twin tubs.

My mum is at the older end of this age group, born 1950. We grew up on frozen pizza, fishfingers, a frozen potato thing called Alphabites, angel delight, nesquick, Kia-ora etc etc. The shops were full
of convenience shite, if that’s what you wanted.

Microwaves, tumble dryers etc- all perfectly normal. We had an electric carving knife and electric tin opener 😂 Disposable nappies were readily available.

Honestly, people need to upgrade their references.

Both my parents worked full time, and both put in full shifts at work and at home (they worked opposite shifts) so whoever was at home did the kids and the house - it was 50/50. Almost all families in my (largely immigrant) neighbourhood were the same (and most worked in the same place anyway).
The only militant WASPIs I know have mostly lived very privileged lives, with only one working parent, and most of them hardly ever worked themselves. It seems a rather privileged pressure group.

Those appliances were far from normal in most homes in the 70s. You clearly didn’t see your less affluent friends’ homes.

My mum had a vacuum cleaner but she most definitely didn't have an automatic washing machine, a freezer or a microwave in the 1970s. No freezer meant no frozen food. There was an ice box in the fridge but it wouldn't hold anything for a family.

I'll state at the outset that I am a WASPI.
I will also state that the Government (which ever flavour you like!) was found guilty of maladministration over the matter of the changing retirement age by the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman, in its wisdom, decreed that WASPIs are eligible for compensation because of that maladministration. That compensation level has been decreed as between £1000 and £2950 per woman affected.

The crux of the matter is that the Government is now refusing to pay that compensation so that basically makes the Ombudsman a powerless entity...

How many other Ombudsman decisions are now going to be ignored because of this injudicious stance?

Right? It’s like a parallel universe. My mum was born in 1947 and we were a low income, single parent household in the 1980s. There was a tumble dryer, microwave, and so much frozen food that I’m probably 45% turkey drumstick.

My mum is older than the Waspis but had her last child late, in 1986, so the experience of bringing up my youngest sibling would be similar to the waspis.

Although bringing up children and housework in the early 70s (when I was born) was very different, bringing up children and housework in the 80s/90s was not. In my teenage years, when my mum was bringing up my youngest sibling, my mum spent no longer on housework than I/DH do (in fact less, as us older children helped more).

What WAS different is that my dad did zero housework or cooking (nor gardening, decorating etc), whereas DH and I share it all. Though my mum worked very few hours whereas I’m full time, so it’s a bit chicken & egg, But that’s probably the biggest change in society.

Automatic washing machines certainly weren’t universal in the early 70s and they were a big purchase, but ownership rose very quickly during that decade – by the end of the 70s a majority of UK homes had one. So for some women it still meant using a launderette or a twin-tub, but for others the automatic was already normal.

The same with fridge-freezers. Early fridges often had a tiny icebox, but proper fridge-freezers became much more common through the 70s. They weren’t a luxury item by the 80s in the way they had been in the 50s/early 60s.