THE STATUS OF WOMENWomen Women aged over thirty gained full political equality (after a fifty-year campaign) in 1918; the age-differential, ascompared with men, was ended ten years later. Woman’s votes have been helpful to the Conservatives—until 1987. At all previous elections for which surveys were taken, slightly more women than men voted for them. In 1987 men's and women's party preferences were identical. It is impossible to guess how much this change was a response to Labour's active sympathy for feminist causes, how much it was a negative reaction to Mrs. Thatcher ' s policies. The proportion of women elected to the House of Commons remained below 5 per cent until 1963. The 1979 election put Mrs. Thatcher into office as Prime Minister, but only nineteen women were elected out of 635 Mps – or less than 3 per cent, the smallest number for over twenty years. In the 1980s the Labour Party, in opposition, began to identify itself with all groups who feel excluded from the 'Establishment'. It had a plan to create aMinistry for Women. For the 1987 general election 92 of the 633 constituency Labour Parties selected women as their candidates, and twenty-one of them were elected to the House of Commons – or one in twelve of all Labour MPs – a greater proportion than at any previous time. With seventeen Conservative women MPs and three of other parties the House ofCommons had forty-one women members. But even this record number is under 7 per cent, well below the proportion in the European countries which use party-list proportional systems of election. Long-term experience with single-seat constituencies indicates that the voters have no prejudice against women as such, but that the party activists who choose a party's candidates in safe seats tend to choose candidates who correspond with the party image. Conservative committees in safe seats tend to prefer prosperous men of high social class. Labour committees prefer men with working-class backgrounds. Although the Conservatives choose as few women astheir candidates for House of Commons seats which they expect to win, women are very active in the affairs of the party as a whole. In all parties ahigher proportion of women is ejected to local councils than to the House of Commons, and many of them attain leading positions. For along time it has been usual to include one or more women among the members of the royal commissions and other committees which government set up from time to time to examine aspects of the national life and to make reports. Women havefor a long time been active in the organisations which have grown up to improve and protect; the environment in which we live, both physical and social. Cross-national comparisons indicate that the participation; and influence of women in activities of this kind is higher in Britain than in the rest of Western Europe except Scandinavia. There are now around ten million women in paid -employment, instead of seven million forty years ago. At that time only half as many women as men, were “economically active” in the labour force; now the difference is quite small. Rut a survey in 1986 showed that women still do nine-tenths of all cooking, washing, ironing and clearing. in the home. Many women work part time. Those who work full time earn. on average two-thirds as much as men; the difference has been reduced less since 1979 than in the previous twenty years. But there are fewer women involuntarily unemployed. Jobs don’t mainly or wholly by women are paid at relatively low rates, perhaps because they are done by women whose bargaining, powers have been relatively weak. Women work lens overtime. In career-type jobs few women are promoted to the highest and best-paid jobs in the hierarchies;– including those in the Civil Service. Hardly when women are directors, or even high-grade executives, in big companies – even those whose main task is to sell goods to women. In education the proportion ofthe women teachers declines both with the pupils' age and with the seniority of the position. The great majority of class teachers in the primary schools are women, but lens than a sixth of the teaching staff of universities; female heads of secondary schools arc very few, female university professors fewer still. Nearly half of the unpaid Justices of the Peace are women, but only one in forty of the professional and well-paid high court and circuit judges. The first woman appeal judge was appointed in 1987. Although by 1969 the three most popular Sunday newspapers oil had women as editors, tic woman had been the editor of any of the ten main national daily papers. This situation has not been much affected by the law against sex discrimination, which was passed in 1975, or by the Equal Opportunities Commission, appointed to monitor the operation of that law, or by the National Women's Commission, another statutory body. But it may be improved in future by the greatchanges that have taken place in higher education. In I960 a quarter of all university students were women. They lived in separate colleges or halls of residence. Now aged fifty, some аre teachers, most have grown-up children but did not work while their children were young; only the most determined have developed their careers. In 1989 two-fifths of a much bigger number of university students were women, no longer segregated in the student-residences. Five or ten times as many women as thirty years аgо are becoming lawyers or accountants. There are hardly any crèches for their small children – and a Minister for Women might indeed fight effectively in Cabinet to provide them – but the new women, graduates of the 1980s and 1990s will probably soon change the balance of the sexes in the higher jobs.
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