Today is International Women’s Day and, after watching a rerun of the excellent film Suffragette, made in 2015, I found myself comparing the lot of women in my own family.
Both grandmothers born in the 1890s
- 1870 = Married women legally allowed to keep their own earnings.
- 1882 = Married women allowed to own property
- 1891 = Right for men to beat their wives removed.
- 1918 = Women over 30 who met property qualifications given the vote.
Mother born on 1922
- 1928 = women over 21 given same voting rights as men
I was born in 1954
- 1969 = voting age in UK reduced to 18
- 1970 = An Equal Pay Act is finally passed
- 1975 = The Sex Discrimination Act – illegal to discriminate against women in employment, education and training.
(note 5 years where equal pay act was basically ignored.) - 1980 = Finally qualified as a Master Locksmith in the all-male MLA after quoting the above acts.
Women’s rights have come a long way in law, and still have some distance to go, since my Nan’s birth. They should never be taken for granted.
Jan Edwards 