What is going on?

[Sofasurfingsally]

It is a shit time to be a woman. That is all.

There was never a good time! Care to be more specific, OP?

It is. I'm in my 40's now and I've never known it to be this bad. I'm never quite sure if that's just because I lacked awareness when I was younger but it certainly feels much worse.

I can give examples. Mark Field, Antoinette Sandbach, the amount of women in government, the sense that the door is ajar and the Trump style pussygrabbers are spilling out over here.

Its always been this bad, its just that during the Blairite years we had a slight respite from it as we made a few legal and social advances, and the worst excesses were dampened.
Now misogyny has been given permission to go public again.

When they talked about Blair's Babes? Yes that was a high point.

Agree we did have a few more significant women politicians at that time.

Didn't Blair give us the 2004 GRA. Turned out to not be such a high point for women's rights.

There was a huge change in womens rights under Labour. It led to a change in attitude across society.
For example, under the previous Tory governments, single parents were openly treated as scum. There was no childcare or tax credits for mothers who wanted to return to work. If you didn't have family who would do it for free, you couldnt work.
Under Labour, childcare was introduced plus tax credits, and women were encouraged - not forced - to start work. That led to a change in attitude towards single parents.
Some funding became available for domestic violence shelters and Rape Crisis.
At one time, the police actually started to listen to Rape Crisis, they introduced rape suites, realised that victims needed counseling and might prefer female staff.

All of those gains have been gradually lost. Added to that, we now have had decades of easy access to increasingly violent porn, and the MRA movement supported by the gaming community and Reddit.
The entire social landscape has changed. Its like going back to the Thatcher years, but the focus is breaking womens boundaries instead of Trade Unions.

That's really interesting - I was a single mother when Blair got into power and I had to stop listening to the radio as it felt like single mother's were the source of all evil.

I'm not in any party myself. But I found the news this morning more depressing than usual. To me, things feel worse. So much seems to happen now that I would not have thought could do, and the attitudes to women seem part of it.

I hear what you say. But the great increase in the coverage of Womens Football, and many more knowledgeable women sports presenters on the media is a plus imo.

It’s not just women feeling like this, by the way. DH read an article about an MRA organisation protesting outside one of Trump’s rallies in the Guardian yesterday and was horrified by the linked footage. He’s appalled by the behaviour of some men and the general coursening of public discourse. He is very supportive of current women’s activism and dismayed by the way things are going backwards.

The Nike women’s football ad I saw at the cinema at the weekend was brilliant, to support Gone2far’s point, but we also need to see genuine, systemic improvements too if we are to move forwards.

I hear what you say. But the great increase in the coverage of Womens Football

I got a sexist comment about Women's Football deleted off the BBC (of all woke places) earlier today. Literally within about 10 minutes. I was gobsmacked they took it seriously.

Things do seem to be worse than they ever have been. The witchcraze hundreds of years ago was partly a land grab. So back then there would have been women who owned substantial pieces of land, and it strikes me that women lived more independent and separate lives than they could ever hope for now. They killed quite a lot of midwives too so we know that birth used to be in the hands of women. Yes it's worse today than hundreds of years ago.

I don’t follow the logic that it was better when we burnt witches and killed midwives.

No obviously the actual witchcraze wasn't a high point for women.
But the catalyst for the witchcraze was for men to redress women's perceived power in society. Women monopolized healing ( after the witchcraze male physicians were able to move into fields like birth and other areas of healing). They also clearly owned a lot of property and land. Men weren't having it.

And when men took over birth it was a total disaster for women. Male physicians would deal with corpses then "deliver" babies not even knowing they had to wash their hands. They caused so many unnecessary deaths

I would strongly recommend anybody who agrees with the previous messages on childbirth read The History of Women's Bodies by E Shorter. It's a good read and opened my eyes on this. I, for one, would rather go through childbirth in the modern age.

FWIW, I'm 60+, and womens lives are much much better now.
At my girls school, the choice of careers offered was nursing or teaching. You only have to look at comedies or films from a decade ago to see things that would be totally unacceptable now (thankfully).
My dh worked in engineering, in a company actively involved in promoting women's role in the industry .

And I'm sorry mummy but
'. So back then there would have been women who owned substantial pieces of land, and it strikes me that women lived more independent and separate lives than they could ever hope for now'
Is nonsense. The only independent women were rich widows, like Bess of Hardwick.

I've always enjoyed being a woman. Certainly wouldn't want to be a man.

@Gone2far "witches" were women who usually lived alone from what I've read. It's been a while since I read "Caliban and the witch" but that's what I remember.
As for childbirth, I read midwife Inna May Gaskin's book about what modern obstetrics does to women and how she's devoted her life offering women other options. It's also easy enough to compare the maternal death rate in countries that heavily medicalize birth, like Brazil and the US ( where C sections are common) and compare them to countries where women usually go for homebirth like the Netherlands. Homebirthing countries are a lot safer.

But you were referring to a previous golden age before the medicalisation of childbirth, which never existed. Were witches powerful (and respected) women in their community? I doubt it.

@Gone2far I think they were respected, yes. As healers and as midwives and as wise women you would go to for advice.