Changing lives of women, 1951-1979
Women’s Lives in the Early 1950s
In 1951, most British women lived lives sharply constrained by legal, social, and economic barriers. Married women were expected to leave paid work when they had children. Women who stayed in employment were paid less than men as a matter of course — employers widely assumed that women worked for “pin money” rather than as the main earner. Access to contraception was limited and controlled by moral as well as practical considerations. Divorce was difficult to obtain and still socially stigmatised. Women who had worked in factories and government during the Second World War had largely returned to domestic roles.
The domestic setting, however, was being transformed by technology. Labour-saving devices became increasingly affordable through the 1950s. A washing machine cost roughly £50 in 1955 — expensive, but within reach via hire purchase. Vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and electric irons spread rapidly. Manufacturers and advertisers promoted these goods through images of the “modern housewife” — a message that accepted women’s domestic role while making it technically easier to fulfil.
The contraceptive pill became available on the NHS in 1961, initially for married women only; restrictions were largely lifted by the late 1960s. The pill gave women reliable control over family planning for the first time, enabling more women to remain in or return to work and to plan their lives around choices rather than pregnancies.
Family, Marriage, Divorce and Abortion
The 1967 Abortion Act was a landmark piece of legislation. Before 1967, abortion was illegal in Britain and carried out illegally at great risk to women. The Act, passed under Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary, allowed legal terminations up to 28 weeks on specified grounds. Campaigners argued it saved women’s lives by ending the danger of illegal abortions; opponents saw it as a moral catastrophe. It fundamentally changed what was possible for women facing unwanted pregnancies.
Divorce law was also reformed. The 1969 Divorce Reform Act introduced “irretrievable breakdown” as grounds for divorce, replacing the previous requirement to prove specific fault (such as adultery or cruelty). This made divorce far more accessible and the divorce rate rose significantly in the 1970s. Some saw this as a sign of declining family stability; others argued it freed people — often women — from unhappy or abusive marriages. Marriage rates also began to fall as cohabitation became more socially acceptable during the 1970s.
In June 1968, 187 women sewing machinists at Ford’s Dagenham car plant walked out on strike. They were demanding equal pay with their male counterparts, arguing that their “unskilled” grading was unfair and discriminatory. The strike halted production — without seat covers, cars could not be assembled — and lasted three weeks. Employment Secretary Barbara Castle brokered a settlement and the women returned, having secured a wage increase to 92% of the male rate.
The Dagenham strike became a symbol of the equal pay campaign and directly influenced the passage of the Equal Pay Act 1970. The Act came into force in 1975 after a five-year implementation period to allow employers to adjust. It represented a fundamental shift in the legal position of women at work, though in practice pay gaps persisted because many workplaces were still sex-segregated (different jobs, different pay scales).
Women’s Rights and Women’s Liberation
The women’s liberation movement emerged in Britain in the late 1960s, influenced by feminist activism in the United States. The first national Women’s Liberation Conference in Britain was held at Ruskin College, Oxford, in 1970, drawing hundreds of women together to discuss employment, childcare, abortion, and legal equality. The movement produced four initial demands: equal pay; equal education and opportunity; free contraception and abortion on demand; free 24-hour nurseries.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 was one of the most significant legal achievements of the era. Passed by Harold Wilson’s Labour government, it made it illegal to treat women less favourably than men in employment, education, and the provision of goods and services. The same year saw the creation of the Equal Opportunities Commission to enforce the new law. Together with the Equal Pay Act, these measures gave British women legal protections that had not existed before.
Four landmark laws transformed women’s legal position: the Abortion Act (1967), the Equal Pay Act (1970, in force 1975), the Sex Discrimination Act (1975), and the Employment Protection Act (1975) which introduced maternity pay rights. All were passed in a decade of rapid legislative change — 1967 to 1975.
Education and Employment
Women’s participation in education expanded significantly during this period. Oxbridge colleges that had been all-male for centuries — including New College, Oxford, and King’s College, Cambridge — began admitting women during the 1970s. The comprehensive school expansion of the 1960s and 1970s improved access to secondary education for girls as well as boys. University attendance by women rose steadily, though women remained underrepresented in science, engineering, and medicine throughout the period.
Employment opportunities widened, but slowly and unevenly. The service sector — banking, retail, clerical work — opened more widely to women. Typing pools and secretarial work remained heavily feminised. Women entered nursing, teaching, and social work in large numbers. Senior management and the professions remained heavily male-dominated. The proportion of women in paid employment rose consistently through the period, particularly among married women, though many worked part-time because of childcare responsibilities and limited access to nursery provision.
Despite the legislative achievements, by 1979 the pay gap between men and women remained substantial. The Equal Pay Act had proven difficult to enforce where men and women did different jobs — a common situation in sex-segregated workplaces. Childcare provision remained largely a private responsibility, limiting women’s ability to take full-time work. In politics, women remained severely underrepresented: there were only 19 women MPs in 1979, despite the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in May of that year — a historic first that itself provoked debate about whether one woman at the top signified real structural change.
The women’s liberation movement remained active and often angry at the pace of change. Campaigns against domestic violence led to the opening of the first Women’s Aid refuges in the early 1970s. The Reclaim the Night marches (from 1977) protested male violence against women. The gap between the law on paper and the reality of women’s lives remained wide.