• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Cultural Shift: The Changing Role of Women

Written by Lucy Portsmouth
Thursday, 16 October 2008 00:00

Our mothers believed that we, as women, could have it all: a happy family, a relaxed home-life and a brilliant career.

The glass ceiling and the inflexibility of the male-dominated work market meant that the hopes generated in this post-sixties flush of optimism were not realised by many. Instead, women who grew up in that era often passed their dreams onto their daughters. Social mobility, equal opportunity laws and feminism have introduced opportunities to women today that our grandmothers could never have comprehended. Prepared to compete in the job market under the same terms and adopt the same norms, memes and ethics of our male counterparts, we proved beyond all doubt that we are the equal of men, and that we are able to function as efficient and effective employees at all levels of organisational hierarchy. Dynamic and determined trail-blazers freed us from the confines of traditional nurturing, caring and domestic industries and many women followed in their wake. Make no mistake here: not all women followed willingly and not all jobs were glittering careers. Women also ended up in dead-end, boring and unfulfilling roles just as men did, but at least now we were demanding a fair crack of the whip.

But, of course, there are children to consider. And then some harsh realisations start to hit home. A career means making the same sacrifices in terms of family life that men do: to succeed, work comes first, family second. For many women, this is still a firmly held decision. There are numerous reasons, including economic, vocational and social, why women choose to work and their choices should be neither decried nor devalued. But it cannot be denied that the sixties’ ideal of a flexible, dynamic partnership where women could have fulfilling, complete careers and family lives all balanced satisfactorily, was revealed as an impossible illusion - to be pursued, but never quite attained.

Such realisations expose the consequences of the race to achieve workplace equality.

Losing women from the home and abandoning the traditional role in which the mother functions as a pivotal member of a community of other mothers has created a generation without a sense of social cohesion. It seems the values, norms and support generated by that web of care, love and attention have been replaced by a howling void in which children and parents are left to navigate their own moral compasses in isolation. Without a cohesive and secure social fabric against which children can test their own developing awareness and maturity, we face disintegration, chaos and conflict. A generation has emerged without a clear cultural identity, the sense of self fashioned out of material possessions and the projection of perfection that those possessions allow them to present to others. This generation has not been raised with a deep-rooted sense of belonging to a community and place where they are known, accepted and understood. We live in an increasingly fragmented, fearful society in which communication on a personal level is neglected.

Working away from home has also resulted in a generation of women dependent on ready-meals and supermarket cheats who have never learned to cook properly, who have lost the ability and knowledge that allows them to feed a family from scratch seven days a week with healthy and nutritious food based on what is seasonal, available and economical. In turn, health has suffered; obesity is at an all-time high and malnutrition is starting to creep back. This is a generation of women unable to live within their means and who have never been taught how to balance a budget, manage household tasks, how to save and make and re-use so that resources are husbanded and secured rather than squandered and wasted. On top of that, we wallow in the highest level of personal debt ever. It is a bleak picture.

So, do our gains compensate for these losses? Some would say yes; others would disagree. I would not advocate for a second that we return to the Victorian era when a woman’s place was in the home. Now, there is growing fluidity in gender boundaries and roles which mean that men are just as capable of fulfilling the pivotal household role as women. However, I will assert my opinion that for many families traditional gender roles remain the most effective.

Those trail-blazing women who made sacrifices so that the women of our generation could choose whether or not they wanted to pursue a career are heroes. While raising children will always be, I think, the most challenging thing anyone can do physically, emotionally or mentally - something that no employment can match - it does not have to be a woman’s pre-determined fate.

There will always be women who gladly fit into corporate roles. The benefits of having a career - engaging with other adults on equal terms, the personal satisfaction of fulfilling potential and realising ambitions - makes it beyond doubt a choice worth having.

Women also understand the responsibility of having children and that the merits of the family life our grandmothers knew can not be ignored. Increasingly, women are turning away from conventional work after having children. Many are choosing to contribute to an income flexibly by taking advantage of job shares, part-time positions and working from home. Some who are able choose not to work at all, prioritising family commitments over a career and accepting the associated reduction in earnings as a necessary price to pay for that freedom. A growing number of women are even finding new and ingenious ways to integrate every area of life into a single, coherent whole by working for themselves and carving out entrepreneurial niches so they can shine without sacrificing family values.

This is not a universal change. Women at the highest and lowest levels of society are as unaffected in real terms by this change as they have been by the previous changes; the roles and opportunities (or lack thereof) available to them are much the same as they have always been. But amongst the middleclass, educated, business-competent and energetic women who the pioneers of the sixties produced, there is a clear shift. Women are now making a statement that they will not be bound by the inflexible practices of large companies. A clear preference has been made for living on our own terms, making small-scale, talent-driven and aspiration-based businesses realistic and desirable because this lifestyle is more compatible with the demands of a family.

Women are re-claiming a sense of belonging, self-esteem and self-actualisation without compromising family. Success is defined not in terms of how much is earned, organisational position or excessive and ostentatious status symbols, but in terms of internal satisfaction. The values of our grandmothers - prudence, economy and self-sufficiency - are re-emerging to reunite the fragmented sense of self into a coherent whole and benefit generations to come.