A woman’s place

In the past I used always to have bread with a scrape of something for my lunch. But even before bread rationing made me think twice about every slice, I began to realise that I was eating too much bread. (Breakfast was often toast.) I got very tired of so much starchy food. Besides, I began to put on weight but lost strength and fitness.

So now, when I’m out shopping in the morning, I look out for something for my lunch. Once or twice a week I buy a couple of herrings. When I get home I’ve very likely got the downstairs rooms to mop and dust — and I can do this and keep an eye on the herrings as they cook. I just rub a butter paper over the frying pan; clean the herrings and flour them, and put them on a very low gas, with my plate tilted over the frying pan to get warm. They’re a fine meal for a chilly day, and you can have them on a tray by the sitting-room fire.

I remember in the old days at home when we were all out at business, I used to be so concerned because my mother had a little way of dining off bread and butter and a pot of tea. I used to put her through a third degree every evening about that midday meal. I often think now of the things I used to say to her about the stupidity of mothers not looking after themselves. But I’ve found we are very much the same generation after generation, aren’t we?

What not to wear

Athena Crosse

April 28, 1948

Athena Crosse was a regular speaker on Woman’s Hour, particularly on fashion.

It’s such a pity that so many women miss being really well-dressed because they wear clothes that are right in themselves, but wrong together, or the right clothes in the wrong place and at the wrong time; or maybe they’re the right clothes on the wrong woman. These failings have very little to do with coupons; good taste and good judgment are the only answer.

Sometimes when I’m shopping or waiting at a bus stop, I long to go round tapping some of the women I see on the shoulder, saying: “Don’t.” Of course they’d think I was mad and would call a policeman. Before he arrived to arrest me, though, these are some of the things I’d have said: “Don’t wear a flowery hat with tweeds; don’t, ever, wear high heels with slacks; don’t ruin your ultra-feminine new-length skirt with tough, country shoes. Touches of white or spots of colour — such as a pink hat and gloves — are charming with a dark suit, but if you add a pink blouse, bag and buttonhole, you’ll merely look spotty. Don’t wear a fussy hat and a fussy dress together; don’t, if you can help it, wear a printed dress with a patterned coat; and don’t smother yourself with bits and pieces of jewellery till you look like an accessory counter.”

As for the right clothes in the wrong place — when you’re dressing, try to picture yourself in those particular garments, in the setting in which you’ll be wearing them, and the chances are that you won’t find yourself tottering down a country lane in high heels. Above all, I’d say: “Don’t ignore the warning voice of your own taste.” If your reaction is that a dress is wrong for you, don’t argue yourself into thinking it is right. I believe first impressions with clothes, as with people, are usually reliable. And if you’ve found some particular style that really becomes you, don’t be too eager to change it — especially if you’re no longer young.

And when it comes to picking colours, firmly refuse any shade, however tempting and fashionable and springlike, unless you are absolutely confident you will be better-looking with it than without it.

Sometimes, you know, there’s a very thin dividing line between a fashionable woman and a figure of fun, and it’s only by knowing what not to wear that you can steer a safe course.

Is there a future for feminism?

Honor Croome

October 15, 1948

Honor Croome was a well-known economist who became a regular contributor to Woman’s Hour.

It’s quite rare nowadays to meet a real, old-fashioned, raging, tearing “women’s rights” feminist — the sort of person who used to go around saying that since men had made such a mess of running the world, they ought to step down and let women do the job. It’s even rarer to meet a real old-fashioned, raging, tearing Manly Man who maintains that women ought never to be allowed out of the kitchen.

For on the whole, the feminists have got what they wanted: freedom to be educated, to earn their own living, to practise the professions, to control their own property, to share the right and the duties of citizenship; and, on the whole, everyone agrees that it’s a good thing. It’s a surprisingly new thing; it’s practically all been won in the last 100 years. Hardly a movement in history has covered such a distance in so short a time.

I wonder how much farther we can expect to go, whether there is a future for feminism, for the pushing forward of women’s activities and the enlarging of their rights. One big fight certainly remains to be won: equal pay for equal work. I can’t see a shadow of justice in paying women less for the same job than men — if it really is the same job, equally well done. I know the argument that men are more apt to have families to support and I think that argument is worth listening to when family men get higher wages than bachelors, or when widows with children to support are paid at a man’s rate. Not till then. But there is another side to the question. What is equal work? Does equal pay for really equal work mean economic equality?

Equal brainpower, energy, conscientiousness, all the other personal qualities, don’t necessarily add up to truly equal work in the long-run. And it’s in the long-run that counts, and counts for something, in pay, in promotion. One is paid, really, not only for the job one is doing now, but for the qualifications one is gaining to do better next year; and next year is apt to be a less certain matter for a woman than for a man. And there’s no use pretending — as some of the early feminists did to a quite extraordinary degree — that wifehood and motherhood needn’t compete with a woman’s professional or business life. They do. They must. Modern science can speed up many things, but not the time that it takes for a baby to develop and get born.

So even with equal pay for genuinely equal work, I don’t believe there is a future for the grand feminist dream of complete economic equality for women.

I wish I were single

May 29, 1958

The Second World War had a devastating effect on many marriages. In the aftermath, a tidal wave of divorce ensued, with thousands of ex-servicemen reportedly queuing up to end their wedding vows. This personal story from a married woman highlights the continuing problem.

I was married as long ago as 1938, so I have had plenty of time to make up my mind about marriage. Now that I am in my mid-forties, with no children, there is such an unbridgeable gap between my husband and myself that it is inconceivable that we could ever have been in love.

Last December, I heard the special edition for single women. How I envied those women! How successfully, how courageously and even how joyously some of them coped with their state of single blessedness. I use that phrase with heartfelt meaning. How I longed for their freedom of choice! How I wished I could change places with one of them.

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Let me tell you something about myself. Like my husband, I come from humble working-class people; but while he had to start work when he was 14, I won a scholarship, stayed on at school and eventually became a teacher, joining the vast numbers of single women who in those days taught in council schools.

I must admit that when I was in my twenties, I was intolerant of single women, who seemed dull and unenterprising, and I dreaded to think I might become one of a type so mercilessly caricatured. I was unhappy both at work and at home, and I looked every where for the means of escape and salvation. That was the background and why I married the first man who paid serious attention to me.

My husband was called up in 1942 and went abroad the next year. As there was such a need for teachers I had, rather reluctantly, joined the staff of a senior boy’s school. But I was enjoying the job after all and found working with men of such different types a most interesting experience. My husband and I were still in love and it was sad to say goodbye; but, before long, I realised that I was enjoying living on my own. I was enjoying a fuller, richer life than I had ever known before.

If I didn’t feel like cooking and cleaning, I could put it off until I did; I could have a bath at midnight if I wanted to; I could read and write in bed — and, best of all, I could invite my friends home as often as I liked. This was a rare pleasure, for my husband was not at all sociable and disliked entertaining.

The end of the war intensified my problems. My husband returned, unscathed, to his former badly paid job. It seemed impossible to adapt ourselves to each other again. My husband spends most of his time out-of-doors, and when he comes in, seldom changes and is not above sitting in filthy corduroys, reeking of pig-muck, in an easy chair with clean covers on.

I feel that I can’t go on and on passively enduring it. You will tell me, as I often tell myself, that my marriage vows were taken “for better or worse”; and, if the better is not as good as I hoped for and the worse is worse than I expected, the blame is largely mine. Perhaps you are right; but I would like the spinsters to know that at least one married woman really does envy them.

Hooray for being a housewife

July 26, 1959

Ba Mason was a regular contributor

It amazes me how much blather goes on about the lot of a housewife, usually from most gifted and intelligent women, too. Why do they think it’s boring and frustrating and drab and dreary?

Don’t think this is going to be a ghastly little homily about the privilege, the joy, the satisfaction there is in being a Homemaker with a capital H. Women talking like that make me quite sick; I want to kick saucepans about. I’m not a super-domestic type at all, but surely — surely being a housewife is an extraordinarily good job, isn’t it?

Well, can you think of any other profession into which one goes in at managing director level purely on looks and personality? I can’t.

To qualify as a housewife one doesn’t have to put in any capital. You don’t have to have any previous experience, pass any exams, do an apprenticeship, have any pull. Right away you’re at the top level, a full-blown housewife, with your taste dictating the whole business, answerable to no one — in fact, if not the actual captain, at least first mate. I think this is one of the very nicest things about being a housewife. No one can boss you about. I worked for seven years in offices and there was always some terrifying woman in charge of me, who had the right to haul me up, criticise my work, dress me down, point out my failings and then give me the sack. Once in your own home you can do exactly what you like, when you like and how you like.

Another point: housewives are terribly important. We are argued about in Parliament, we can influence our husbands, or so I understand. A would-be Member of Parliament called on me the other day and poured out a lot of frightfully boring facts about butter and bacon, none of which I understood. When I asked him why he told me all this, he reverently said: “You are a housewife.”

When I have to fill in a form I put “housewife” in the space left for occupation with a great flourish — not because I’m proudly conscious of the fact that I’m a good one, but happily aware that I’m in a job where I can get away with a hell of a lot and there’s no one who’ll come and sack me.

On my daughter’s recent abortion

October 21, 1975

Abortion had first been discussed on Woman’s Hour in 1960 and the programme had closely followed the debates during the decade that led to the 1967 Abortion Act. In an attempt to outlaw back-street abortion, the procedure had been legalised in circumstances in which two doctors believed that the woman’s health was at risk. The nation was divided on the issue: into those who believed that the termination of life in any form was wrong, pitted against those who believed it was a woman’s right to choose.

During the 1970s, several attempts were made to amend the Act. In 1990 the time limit for an abortion was reduced from 28 to 24 weeks. Sue MacGregor introduced the speaker for this item, explaining that she was a mother of a teenage daughter, who wished to remain anonymous.

I had never read the Abortion Bill, nor thought it necessary to have an opinion on it. After all, I am well over 40 and hardly likely to be affected by it. If I’d been asked, I should undoubtedly have said that, on principle, I held all life to be sacred and that moral laxity was not to be condoned. I grew up in a quite different moral climate from today’s, when unwanted pregnancies had to be endured and the option of legal abortion was just not there. Besides, one had principles. It is easy, of course, to have principles until you’re actually faced with the dilemma of a teenage, and possibly pregnant, daughter. All right, so life is sacred but I knew that, in practical terms, I would be the one who would have to bear the brunt of this particular life and that, having brought up three children of my own, I was not prepared to do that.

All right, so moral laxity was not to be condoned — but this was my daughter, and that made it different. The afternoon came though, when we presented ourselves (and the consultation fee of £7) at the Pregnancy Advisory Service. It was a hot afternoon and, as we sat in the crowded room along with 18 other pregnant women and girls, I couldn’t help wondering what we were doing there. I was — again — appalled at what my daughter and all the others were about to do, while at the same time I was hypocritically anxious for someone to get on and do it.

My daughter was counselled. She was shown great kindness, for which I was grateful, while not being able to shake off the feeling that we had no business being there. She was given an appointment to see a second gynaecologist a week (it seemed like a year) later.

In reality, however, she was referred very quickly to a private clinic, and told to arrive early the following morning with an overnight bag and £60. There were 16 others admitted on the same day. (Sixteen times £60, my mind kept trying to work out, although I’m not complaining — who am I to complain?) And the day after, she, and all the other 16, were duly discharged. “They” had been right: there was nothing to it. It was soon over, although “ they” hadn’t thought to warn us about the remorse, the tears to be shed and the weeks of depression to be lived through.

It will be a long time before the remembrance of it all fades away. With my strictly moral upbringing, I don’t suppose it ever will. It will be a long time too before I can stand on “principle” about anything again. And I don’t, even now, know what I’m trying to prove — to myself or anyone else — except that in the last resort we do what it suits us to do. I would be exactly the same again, whether it cost £60 or £600, however appalled, guilty or hypocritical I might seem to be. So maybe others should have the right to do the same.

Woman’s Hour, with an introduction by Jenni Murray, is published by John Murray at £20. Available from Times Books First for £18 incl p&p: 0870 16080