Growing up in the sixties, we were young and despised inequality. At that time, women were not able to have a mortgage or buy a car without a man countersigning the purchase. This caused a great rift between my father and my sister. She lived frugally and saved a huge proportion of her salary as a teacher in order to have these things. My father was a spendthrift and a Headteacher. In spite of this my sister could not buy her car without my father signing to say that she was able to buy this car. My sister was livid as she knew the value of money and my father did not. She felt this injustice very deeply.
At that time women headteachers were paid less than men. The irony was that more women were employed as heads because they were cheaper but the minute equal pay came in,fewer women were able to become headteachers, whatever their experience was and however good they were, they rarely got these jobs, unless they were all girls schools. I only went to all girls schools so my headteachers were women. I enjoyed going to a same sex school. We all felt safe there and we girls did sciences, latin and there was no question that we were not able to study any subject.
At university, I spent a great deal of my time, demonstrating and fighting for equal rights, equal pay, equal education and job opportunities and legal and financial independence. As you can imagine, financial independence was particularly important to my sister. University inequalities affected me. I went to one of the 5 top grammar schools in the country. My head teacher decided that I should not study Advanced Level Latin. My furious mother took me out of that school and put me in a comprehensive school. I applied to go to Girton college Cambridge and we all had to sit the entrance exam. I know I passed because Cambridge university rang both headteachers. The comprehensive headteacher told my father about it. They wanted to know why I left the posh school and ended up in a comprehensive. They listened to the posh school headteacher and never called me for an interview. They would not be allowed to behave in that snobby way today.
Our struggles at that time bore fruit for students later on but not for us. We were fighting for the future for other students. When I talked to the Careers officer at university and said I wanted to be a film editor at the BBC. I was actively told not to consider it as it was a man’s job. I later worked in the BEEB but in Personnel or Human Resources as they call it now and later was promoted to the Corporation Welfare Office. I loved the job but it was still considered women’s work. Eventually there was equality at the BBC but in recent times they have been having to face up to older women, not being considered able to present programmes. That ,too, is changing now, thank goodness. I remember reading a letter in the staff magazine where the writer, a man, felt that women would not make good newsreaders as their voices did not carry enough gravitas.
Now we have almost complete equality including gay couples marrying and bringing up children. It is such a wonderful thing, I feel. However, we still have a way to go until misogyny (woman hatred) is included as a hate crime. Rape attacks and domestic violence still continue.
So let us turn to the youth of today. I would not like to be young today. They cannot afford to get onto the housing ladder and young people are having to stay at home until they are in their thirties or using the bank of Mum and Dad. Unemployment is rising. University degrees do not automatically lead to good wages or decent lives. They start to feel powerless and young men begin resenting women.
Researchers posed a statement,
“When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, things have gone far enough in my country”. Almost half of our young men today agreed with it. Young men today, it seems, are trying to go backwards and take away women’s rights. Many of them, research as found, think that women should obey their husbands. Some also believe that women should not initiate sex. Some also believe that women should not make the final decision in a relationship. Also young men must bear responsibility for their attitudes towards young women.
Inequality is also in competition and young men seem to fight for money. We are shown how the rich get richer and the poor poorer. 1% of our country owns 70% of the wealth. When I was young it was 7% owned 84% of the wealth. Young men need to learn compassion and should stop trying to be macho.
We have to have more jobs, higher wages and a better standard of living for our young people. The danger is that if they go backwards it will end up with young women fighting for their rights again and nobody wants to live through that. We’ve already done this once.
I feel very sorry for young people today. In university now, students have massive debts. When I was at university I had a grant. There was never any discussion about student loans. There was means testing so that if parents could afford to pay they paid. The difficulty then was if the parents did not want to support their children and they had the money to do so then it became difficult. Their only recourse was that the parents had to sign forms disowning their children forever and then they could get a full grant. Of course many parents would refuse to do that so my friend was unable to go to university.
For young men today, they have to remember that inequality is the problem, not women.
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