- Women in the 1950s and ‘60s were finding themselves in a situation they had already found themselves in just 20 years earlier: again they had to give up what they had enjoyed during the war, having a job. Sources D and E are symptomatic of the mood at the time and although source D is not dated, we can assume it was written in the 60s due to the pressure the woman seems to be under. Women were having a hard time trying to escape stereotypes as they tried to become more independent and source D is a perfect example on why they were finding it so hard. Because source D is a children’s book it’s incredibly useful to help understand why opinions about women weren’t changing in the 1950s and 1960s. Just like in Nazi Germany, indoctrination through books and nursery rhymes were ways of making the children grow up with certain beliefs in what’s right and wrong. Source E shows how young children were made to believe that a woman’s place was in the kitchen making tea while “Peter helps Daddy with the car”. Source E shows that girls’ and boys’ roles in life were differentiated from the youngest of ages and it’s this type of attitude and belief that forced the woman in source D to feel as though she “should be at home with the children” although she was a successful woman business executive.
Both sources are useful because they are not biased: source D is an account, hence the woman writing it doesn’t hide her thoughts and feelings and source E is part of a Janet and John reading book which wouldn’t have been altered to fit anything other than what adults believed their children should learn about. The only limitation the two sources present is the lack of dates and we are thus left to assume the dates through the knowledge of the mood there was in the 1959s and 1960s. Also, source D could have been written any time between 1940 and 1970 simply because things were moving so slowly for women.
Although sources D and E tell us how and why women felt obliged to stay at home ad therefore give up their independence, source D is only one successful woman’s account and so can’t be used as a general overview. Moreover, the sources don’t touch on important changes that took place in the 1940s, such as the first birth control clinics being formed giving women more independence on how many children they chose to have and when. We also know that in 1945 twenty-four women were elected to Parliament, giving women new opportunities.
In conclusion, although women were still accepting a subordinate role, they were achieving new positions in society and they finally had some control over life at home. Sources D and E are, however, very useful in showing us why women were finding it difficult to become independent and it helps us understand how important it still was to change the stereotype and mind set of women in the 1950s-60s. Because of stereotypes such as ‘Janet and John’ books, women such as the one in source D felt they too should be at home getting the tea.
4. In the 1960s, feminism established itself as a movement which aimed to change society for the benefit of women. The first real attempts to achieve equality between men and women included the Equal Pay Act in 1970, the Employment Protection Act and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975. Although feminists had obviously managed to make an impact of some sort, as both sources F and G suggest, the laws passed didn’t have the desired effect on society.
There are several reasons to why the regulations didn’t really work but the most significant, which is also reflected by the sources, is probably the fact that although you can pass a law in a few days, you can’t change people’s attitudes in so little time. In fact, according to the sources, 10 years wasn’t enough time as source G was written in the 1970s and source F was written in the 1980s but they both express a feeling of pessimism towards the way the new laws were establishing themselves in society.
The first problem, not mentioned in the sources, was that there were loopholes in the laws which meant that parsimonious employers would give men and women jobs with different names when, effectively, the men and women were doing the same job. This way, the employer avoided paying women the same amount as men. Furthermore, women with part-time jobs didn’t benefit at all from these new laws and so a large majority of women remained completely unaffected until the 1990s when laws for part time workers were passed. Even young women and girls had little hope of benefiting from these new laws. Although the Sex Discrimination Act was passed, girls continued to study different subjects to boys at school as girls were encouraged to study History and English whilst boys did Maths and Sciences.
As source F states: “New laws and regulations don’t bring social change. The most they can do is to create a climate more favourable” and this brings me on to the next point. Laws can change but it’s hard to change mindsets and attitudes especially when the young ie// school children, are still been differentiated between according to their sex. When a generation was brought believing a woman’s place was in the kitchen, a law isn’t going to change their beliefs, it’s just going to change the way they go about ‘practising’ their belief; by avoiding the laws or simply breaking them. This essentially explains why the feminist who wrote source F is fundamentally saying the same thing as the feminist in source G is saying, even ten years down the line. Yet another barrier that still needed breaking down was that of underpaid women in what were recognised as ‘women’s jobs’ such as nursing and teaching. In these cases, women had no men to be equal to and their employers just paid them as little as possible until the 1990s when a minimum wage was introduced.
Source F is a good foundation for telling us what the mood was towards the laws and this may be because by the 1980s, the laws had been expected to have some kind of effect. For this reason, source F is more pessimistic then source G as it states that “women will get nowhere unless they organise and fight for themselves” and this is explicable as this feminist is obviously frustrated at the fiasco of the laws that were meant to bring equality between men and women but we know today that legislation has to be implemented. Because source G was written most likely around the time when the laws were passed, it seems a little more hopeful and rather more informative than thoroughly pessimistic: “most women received some increase in pay as a result of the Equal Pay act”. The fact that both sources were written by feminists does present the problem that the two sources may be a little inclined to accuse the system of being inefficient. What is more, both sources are very small passages taken from a book which means that we don’t see the other side of the coin; the more positive information about the feminist movement and its success in finally getting women noticed.
Conclusively, the legislations passed in the 1970s didn’t have their desired effect as people weren’t prepared to change their mindset and many employers found loopholes in the laws, making it difficult for women to achieve anything significantly life changing thanks to the laws. Moreover, it took a long time for the laws to actually take their toll which is why the two sources, written within ten years of each other, don’t show much sign of improvement for women.
5. ‘Women in Britain are still second class citizens’
Firstly, the definition of a second class citizen is a person who does not benefit from their human rights and doesn’t have their civil rights fulfilled. If we look at the statement in that context, it is definitely false as women in Britain, generally, benefit from all their human rights as I doubt the majority of women are deprived of food or water and are beaten daily. Nevertheless, if we look at the statement in context with the sources and the rest of the research, it soon becomes clear that we are talking about ‘second class’ in the economic world and in the world of sexism and patriarchy.
Source H is the most recent source we have and it suggests, as do all the other given sources, that women are undervalued as they have so much to do around the house as housewives and it seems to me that the photo was taken to prove that being a housewife is no easier than being any ordinary employee in an office. The limitation of the source is that we don’t know for what purpose the photo was taken or in what context it what used. We can only guess it was taken to prove a point about housewives being one of the hardest workers in society as they raised the country’s children as well as cooking, cleaning, mending, hosting etc. Sources F and G both touch on how the laws passed in the 1970s and1980s had hardly any positive effect on women’s day to day lives and sources D and E seem to marry well with all the sources as they show how women were stereotyped and why women felt pressured by this stereotype to follow it, even when they had succeeded in other areas. Sources A, B and C are more dated but they show why women started to criticize the way society worked and they represent how women were seen for a large part of the 20th century. Sources B and C especially show how the mindset of that generation caused the disappointment of the laws passed in the 1970s and 80s (sources F and G) and their failure at changing attitudes which were obviously so very different to anything to do with equality of the sexes.
Sources from nowadays seem to be quite divided on the topic as some sources show that women are very happy workers as they are so able at running a multi-faceted lifestyle. The Sunday Times (02/03/03) has the headline: “Women poorer but happier employees”. So, women haven’t achieved completely equal pay yet (although massive progress has been made over the years) but they don’t seem to be complaining. In fact, women have achieved new goals as Tricia Purves was appointed as the first woman Brigadier in the British Army and we have more women MPs than ever before: 119 to be exact. Although women seem to be happier, the fact still remains that they still by and large get paid less, face discrimination on the work place and the 119 women MPs only represent a small fraction of the 669 there are in Parliament. Some may even argue that often women don’t know they are paid less, so satisfaction with pay is almost ignorance.
It is important to take education into account, as most schools across the country are now mixed schools and girls and boys have the same subject options at school apart from Physical Education options were girls are inclined to do more ‘feminine’ sports and not practice rugby or football. Of course, some men still feel superior to women but generally, the new generations are being taught to treat women equally and differences between sexes are being dealt with as well as racial differences seeing as society is trying to move more towards equality than ever before.
Family planning is yet another factor that had a huge effect on women’s lives as they could choose when to have children and so gained a new independence from their partners. Another effect feminism had was to create a sense of camaraderie amongst women which encouraged them to set up homes and residences where they could get away from abusive husbands with their children and cases that concern sex discrimination and such are taken very much seriously nowadays.
There is however, a downside to all this equality fighting. Only very recently a man took a Sex Discrimination case to court claiming that is his female colleagues weren’t required to wear smart suits all the time and he therefore shouldn’t have to wear a tie, and he won the case. In fact, there almost seems to be a role reversal as men seem to be becoming more vulnerable to suffering discrimination and abuse from women. Cases of husband beatings are being reported more and more often and women almost seem to be getting quite powerful quicker than they had ever done before, but there is a price for equality. An example is that of the pension ages being changed. By 2020 women will retire at 65 rather than 60 to match their male colleagues.
In conclusion, the sources are quite limitative in what they tell us about women’s progress through the last 80 years since they are all pessimist or they all show stereotypes of women. There are no sources showing a piece of positive feminist writing or any newspaper clippings of how much uproar feminists were causing with their unique demonstrations. Women have moved on from being second class citizens. I think it’s not appropriate to call women in Britain that anymore since they have fair opportunities in life compared to men and compared to other countries, equality has been reached beyond belief on all aspects, including fashion for example: women today can wear what they like in this country but it’s very different in countries such as Iran or Iraq. In terms of changes to the law, feminists did very little since only governments can change the law but feminism definitely resulted in a change of attitudes as women are now given opportunities in all fields and slowly, equality is being reached.
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