Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
I like the Lovejoy series by Jonathan Gash, but the way Lovejoy treats women in the first few novels is horrendous. And that's from the late seventies.
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Yeah, but think of the times - the first flowering of the sexual revolution before the grim spectre of AIDS, women's liberation, the zipless f*ck. Erica Jong, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem. Even then it was expected that a woman got married, had kids, looked after hubby and home. If she had a job, it was for pin money and wasn't a 'proper' career job. Heck, just watch 70s TV re-runs and see who women featured in those shows, especially the cop shows.
That's when I was in my early 20s - I graduated late 70s, worked for a while, then went back to get my masters before going back into the job market. Even though my Mum was fairly atypical and raised my sister and myself to be independent, we were still expected to marry etc, etc. As it happens, I didn't, but my sister did - she's the stay-at-home mum with 4 kids (she gave up work after #2 child), but I was the one expected to give up my home & job to look after Mum when she got too frail because I didn't have a husband and family.
And don't get me started on the attitudes I got exposed to in my secondary school. It was a convent school with all that entailed. To actually get a good science education I had to leave the convent and move to the Catholic boys school as mere females weren't expected to be interested in science.