Women are still fighting to be treated as equals with men, and while we still have a long way to go, the issues we deal with today are nothing compared with what generations before us went through. And a Reddit thread is reminding us just how far we’ve come. A woman asked the subreddit “Ask Old People,” “What are some of the little things you remember related to inequality that would be shocking now?”
While the question was open to anyone, it was overwhelmingly women who responded, sharing the sexist BS they had to deal with in the past, some of it as recently as the 1990s!
- "My doctor needed my husband's approval in order to get me contraceptives."
- "Twice in the '90s I was not given a job because I wore a pantsuit to the interview and they found it 'unprofessional.' After that, I started wearing them to all my interviews to weed out companies where I might end up being harassed for daring to wear pants."
- "I worked in a bank in the '80s. No slacks. I also kept an extra pair of pantyhose at work in case I got a run. The manager would send you home to change otherwise. I wore a slip under my dress. And no chairs behind the teller counter. I stood in heels for eight hours."
- "My mom was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship — in math. The nuns tried really hard to get her there...but nope. She had to stay home and 'keep house' for her older brother because their mother had died."
- "In the 1970s, I wasn’t allowed to take shop or drafting in high school because it would 'distract the boys.'"
- "I was allowed to be asked if I was pregnant or planning to become pregnant in job interviews!"
- "I had to get my dad's permission to get a bank account at 18 — this was in the early '70s."
- "My mom was told she had to have her husband or her father give permission for her to start working part-time at Sears. This was in 1967 and she was 20 years old."
- "My mom was refused access to an engineering school because she’d take the place of a 'man who needed to support a family.' She was encouraged to take math so she could be a teacher."
- "In 1964, my grandmother had to quit her corporate job because…she was pregnant with my uncle. Pregnant women couldn't work for the company after they were showing."
Source: Reddit
Scott's Thoughts:
- One woman adds that female U.S. senators couldn’t wear pants on the Senate floor until 1993! .
- What sexism did you deal with in the past or did your mom tell you she experienced?
- What kind of inequality are you still dealing with as a woman today?