Like mother, like daughter

History of women between 1940 and 1970

In the family, wives and mothers wanted a renegotiation of the old order. They argued for a form of democracy in the home where rights and responsibilities would be equally shared. In the work place they wanted equal rights, equal opportunity and equal pay. The 1944 Education Act established the principle of free education for all from primary to secondary, but at eleven plus there were quotas for admission to grammar school. The Hunts Post of 1954 published an article headlined "Girls Brainier Than Boys". It informed its readers that too many girls had been passing the exam and education authorities had decided to limit numbers. It's now estimated that without the quotas, in mixed grammar schools, two thirds of all the classes would have been occupied by girls. The quotas persisted in Birmingham and Northern Ireland until the late eighties when the High Court ruled them discriminatory.

In 1968, came the second wave of feminism. The women's movement of the second part of the century began to bubble in the mid sixties as American women like Betty Friedan wrote of their dissatisfaction with their lot as wives and mothers. For anyone other than the upper classes, childcare and the running of the home was still considered woman's work, forcing women to choose between their talents and their family lives. The composer Elizabeth Lutyens described it as a ghastly tyranny of choice for someone who wanted to do what men did as a matter of course - her work and her family.

Late 60s and early 70s
In 1968 the women's liberation movement had its first major raft of publicity when women demonstrated at the Miss America competition and threw their stiletto heels in the bin . But whatever the hated symbols of oppression were, women were saying that what is most personal is political and they were questioning and redefining their roles as wives, mothers, workers and lovers in the light of their own experience, rather than through men's eyes.

To be a young woman in the late sixties and early seventies was unimaginably exciting. Feminist light bulbs, as the American author, Gloria Steinem described them, were coming on all over the place as women faced a problem and forced change. At the BBC women weren't allowed to wear trousers, as Susannah Simons discovered. In 1969 she was one of that year's intake of new studio managers. Her pride and joy was a white polo neck sweater, white trousers and knee length jerkin. A senior executive pointed out her transgression in the Broadcasting House lift, so she removed the trousers, leaving herself only the shortest of mini skirts. The rules were soon changed. A young Australian, Carmen Calil, realised that fiction by women was not being published and classics from the past were out of print. Around her kitchen table in 1973 she formed the first feminist publishing house, Virago. Her countrywoman, Germaine Greer, who published The Female Eunuch in 1970 had already whetted the appetite for work by women.

In 1970 the first British conference of the Women's Liberation movement in Oxford resolved to press for employment legislation. That same year Barbara Castle as Secretary of State for Employment introduced the Equal Pay bill. It was enacted in 1975 together with the Sex Discrimination Act. The laws have not proved perfect, but they provided a legal framework for change.

Condition of women from 1970 to 2000

Women have had to fight for their recognition as full human beings and for the granting of their basic human rights for a long time, and unfortunately the fight is not over yet, although their situation has globally improved in many ways, social structures and prejudices still hinder the full and immediate implementation of human rights of women the world over.

The principle of equality, as formally expressed in law, without differentiation between women and men, often implies hidden discrimination against women. Discrimination means any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.

It was only in the 1970s that the inequality in many areas of daily life, poverty among women and the discrimination against girl-children led the United nations to decide to launch the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace from 1976 to 1985. In 1979 the decade culminated in the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women “CEDAW”. This document is the most important human rights instrument for the protection and promotion of women’s rights. For the first time, women were recognized as full human beings by CEDAW which contains civil and political rights as well as economic social and cultural rights, uniting human rights otherwise divided into two categories.

After the CEDAW there was the birth of many other associations and there were a lot of conferences and conventions to care about the juridical position of women. We can remember for example: in 1975 the first United Nations World Conference on Women (Mexico City), in 1980 the second UN World Conference on the Women (Copenhagen), 1985 the third UN World Conference on Women (Nairobi), and in the same year there was the adoption of the Nairobi forward Looking Strategies for the advancement of Women to the year 2000, 1995 there was the fourth UN World Conference (Bejing), and in the same year Belém do Parà Convention on prevention, punishment and eradication of violence against women, in 1998 there was the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; in 1999 there was optional protocol to the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, in 2000 there was the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Conventions Against Transnational Organized Crime; in the same year there was also the 23rd Special Session of the General Assembly on “Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the 21st Century”.

In 1970 when more and more women entered the work force, they thought that their life would be better than that of their mothers. Women started to combine work with family and this made life more stressful. Unlike men, women, after a hard day’s work, came back home and couldn’t relax. They had to do housework and look after their children. Starting in the 70s, women began to have important roles even in political fields, above all in Great Britain, in the U.S.A., but also in the Eastern countries.

Half of all business travelers are now women. In the 70s the figure was just one percent. About 8 million women own business organizations nowadays, whereas only 400,000 did in 70s. Now women are more often the breadwinners of the family, while in 80s only one in 15 homes had a female boss. The figure is today one in 5. A survey has shown that women managers do better than male partners in decision making and planning skills. From on 70s they decided to have children later, so they concentrate on their jobs. They want more money and maybe by 2010 they’ll earn more money than their male partners.

Women nowadays are doing better than men in almost all fields: business, armed forces and sport, so we can see the end of a world dominated by men. Scientific research shows us how women are both psychologically and physically stronger than men.

Physically women’s bodies are better at using fat. If we threw a man and a woman into the Atlantic Ocean on a cold day, a woman’s distribution of fat could help her to survive longer than a man. Moreover men tend to put on the fat around their waists, and this makes them typically apple shaped. Being apple shaped involves a higher risk of heart diseases and blood sugar problems such as diabetes. This explains why women live longer than men.( men usually live about 73 years, while women about 79). Moreover the presence of testosterone in men makes them more violent and impulsive than women; so a world without men would perhaps be a world without wars.

Male and female learning abilities are different. The latest research has shown that women are more able in verbal fluency and memory, in linguistic skills and in emotional communication because they use both hemispheres of the brain, while men use only the left.

Women who were the first victims of violence during war and army conflict, now play an active role in armed struggles. Since the 90s, with the beginning of the Gulf war, women have been assigned combat roles in the Balconies, the Middle east and Afghanistan.