| In the 1970s many of us thought working
outside the home would be liberating for women, freeing them from financial
dependence on men and allowing them roles beyond those of wife and
mother. {{U}}It hasn't worked out that way{{/U}}. Women's labor has been bought on the cheap, their working hours have become longer and their family commitments have barely diminished. The reality for most working women is a near impossible feat of working ever harder. There have been new opportunities for some women: professions once closed to them, such as law, have opened up. Women managers are commonplace, though the top boardrooms remain male preserves. Professional and managerial women have done well out of neoliberalism. Their salaries allow them to hire domestic help. But more women, such as the supermarket or call centre workers; the cooks, cleaners and hairdressers, all find themselves in low-wage, low-status jobs with no possibility of paying to have their houses cleaned by someone else. Even those in professions once-regarded as reasonably high-status, such as teaching, nursing or office work, have seen that status pushed down with longer hours, more regulation and lower pay. Women's right to work should not mean a family life where partners rarely see each other or their children. Yet a quarter of all families with dependent children have one parent working nights or evenings, many of them because of childcare problems. The legislative changes of the 1960s and 1970s helped establish women's legal and financial independence, but we have long come up against the limits of the law. A more radical social transformation would mean using the country's wealth—much of it now produced by women—to create a decent family life. A 35-hour week and a national childcare service would be a start. But it is hard to imagine the major employers conceding such demands. Every gain that women have made at work has had to be fought for. Women's lives have undergone a revolution over the past few decades that has seen married women, and mothers in particular, go from a private family role to a much more social role at work. But they haven't left the family role behind: now they are expected to work even harder to do both. |