Sunday 27 November 2011






TURNING BACK TIME


For the first time in nearly 150 years The Fawcett Society  has organised a  demonstration. In towns and cities all over Britain, marchers in 1950s housewife gear - rubber gloves, headscarves and full-skirted frocks - took to the streets. Their  protest is against austerity measures  which will 'turn back time' on women's rights.
The time they fear returning to is the 1950s - and it's true that some people are nostalgic about that  decade.
I was a schoolgirl, student and young married woman in the 1950s,  and was  perfectly happy too -  but that was because I didn't know any better. Between the end of the war and the coming of  the women's liberation movement girls and women simply took the limitations  on their freedom for granted. We were second class citizens and I don't believe that anyone who has grown up in the last half century would put up for a single minute with the rules, regulations and restrictions that kept women down when I was young - or with unequal pay and  limited job opportunities.  The  Fawcett Society is absolutely right.









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