Something to mull over
pansyface
PEAK DISTRICT DerbyshirePosts: 16,251
First of all, this really, really is just something for people to think about quietly while lying in the bath or sipping a sweet sherry.
I am not inviting comments - really. I don't expect any responses.
Verdun's recent thread elicited some thought provoking comments and got me thinking too.
For everyone who has ever said that they wish to preserve our British way of life and our democratic philosophies etc. here are some facts to think about.
The first year in which women got equal voting rights to men - 1928
The first female County Court judge in England 1962
The first High Court judge (same person) - 1965
First year in which women were allowed to run the marathon in the Olympic games 1984 (deemed too frail to stand its rigours before then)
First year a British woman became an ambassador anywhere in the world - 1996 (to Denmark)
First female Vice Chancellor elected to any Oxford University college - 2015
These events are all within living memory. We are skating on thin ice when we complain about other, benighted civilizations, I think.
As I said, it's just a bit of food for thought.
Posts
I'm waiting for the year when men do more housework than women
It was reckoned a short time ago that a man would have to pay £38,000, more or less, to have the same amount of house work done by someone other than his wife.
And as far as paid employment goes, I am still waiting to see the 1970 Equal Pay Act take effect.
As you say Pansyface, perhaps we are not as enlightened as we would like to believe.
You can never ever leave
Without leaving a piece of youth
Unmarked or unmarried?
I've heard the comment "He's a marked man" before but never in the context of betrothal.
When I first started work in 1968 with a large insurance company, there were two pay scales: one for men and one for women. I, at the age of 18 was paid less than a young man aged 16 who had fewer academic qualifications than I had. It was the norm.
Women were second class citizens within living memory - and it is right that we should reflect on this. But it does not excuse or justify tolerance of cultures that have not accepted the progress that has been made. And the difference in pay-scales is not remotely comparable to the discrimination that brings about the abhorrent actions in Cologne and other parts of Germany on New Year's Eve. IMHO
I am enormously privileged to live in a world where I have been educated, can work, express my opinions, vote and, if I wish, take part in running my community or country just like a man. I may travel or shop alone or with others, wear whatever I wish, drive, own property....you get my drift. Even more important to me, I think, is that men and women here both have intellectual and religious freedom, a political voice, access to justice, information, a free and often critical press. We have books and theatre, ideas. I want to share these wonderful things with other people. I find myself at a complete loss that some of those to whom I would offer these things wish, not to share, but to destroy them. Perhaps all civilisation is pretty thin: how on earth do we sustain and strengthen it?
I find it abhorrent that young girls are taken from this country to endure female genital mutilation, that there are countries where women have no education, where they are stoned to death after being raped by a man, and homosexuals are thrown off of buildings to their death. I do not want any acceptance of any of these.