A century of International Women’s Day

The fact this day has been observed for 100 years had a profound effect on me. I tried to imagine what life would have been like for me in 1911. I decided to examine the generations of women in my family over the last century and map their path to me. One thing they had all in common is they took advantage of the opportunities laid out to them, led the desire to increase their earning potential.

On both sides of my parents family, our roots are firmly in working classes. My maternal grandmother left school at 14 like many of her contemporaries and began an apprenticeship with a confectioners, which she didn’t like and left after a year. Before the Second World War broke out she had the opportunity to go to night school, free of charge, to learn shorthand and typing. August 1939 she turned 17 and the family had moved from Liverpool to Halifax, West Yorkshire. Women were enlisted to work in factories for the war effort, usually if they had no dependents, making parts that they understood (but never knew exactly) to be used by the Navy. Women were needed to fill the gap left by men serving in the armed forces but despite this, were still paid less than their male counterparts. 1943 After the war, she married and started a family but continued to work. Nana explains to me, ’We wanted to boost our income, to buy appliances such as washing machines and televisions.’. She went back to night school in the 1960’s which allowed her access to office work and eventually the civil service, who didn‘t usually take on married women but opportunities had changed since the war.

My paternal grandmother was the daughter of a carpenter. Despite having already started a family before the war, she helped out at her husbands family business running a grocers shop, as well has raising her son, while he was away serving in the army. After the war, she went on to work at Alders department store earning an apprenticeship and eventually becoming supervisor of the ladies fashion department. She also continued to work while raising my father who was a baby boom child, 10 years younger than his brother born just before WW2. As a child she’d show me the clothes she had bought with her staff discount at the time of her working there, all kept neatly in their original cellophane packaging. Her taste was impeccable. They were equally both proud of having paid off their mortgage by retirement, owning a home outright was a big achievement for their generation and it was down to their dual income that made it possible.

For very similar reasons, my mother pushed herself up the promotion ladder to earn a better living. The swinging sixties wasn’t completely revolutionary for women depending on where you lived or your social background. The likelihood was you wanted to leave school as early as possible and earn money to buy the latest fashions, Rolling Stones records and have a fairly decent social life. My mother’s family had relocated from south London to near Gatwick airport for her father’s work. The growth of the airport presented more job opportunities in the area plus the perks of foreign travel which she made the most of before married life and children. Even though she worked part-time jobs when my sister and I were at school, it wasn’t until we were in our teens and could fendr for ourselves after school (and Saturday jobs of our own) did she start a career culminating in becoming Studio Manager for Filofax, co-ordinating the print production and content of diary inserts. It was her extra salary that enabled me to go to University in 1992 and I was the first girl on both sides of my immediate parents family to go.

Although going on to further education was symbolic for my parents and grandparents generation, in 1992 it didn’t and still doesn’t necessarily guarantee social and economic mobility for women. We can’t deny that more women are moving into typical male dominated professions and more women are having careers and starting their own businesses. It seems to all fall down when women want to start a family, the environment for maintaining a career and bringing up a family becomes more challenging either through lack of support from employers or simply the nature of the jobs themselves. In my view, there is some way to go for complete gender equality in the workplace and across many communities all over the world which is why as well as celebrating our achievements on Tuesday, it will be a time to reflect and discuss what more can be done. Especially the difference we can make for our children.

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