A Woman of Our Time

Originally posted at Coppola Comment on 27/5/2011.


In the last fifty years, the lives of British women have been transformed beyond recognition. Many of these changes are beneficial, such as anti-discrimination legislation and improvements to childcare. But there is a hidden cost. In this post I describe a woman of our time...is she typical? I fear she may be.....

She is divorced, with two children. She married late, at 30, and had her children in her mid-30s. Maybe because of late pregnancy she didn't have too good an experience of childbirth, and still has the scars to prove it.  But the effect of having children on her lifestyle was far worse.

She used to do a demanding but well-paid job. But when the children came along she quickly discovered that long hours and overseas travel aren't compatible with small children unless someone else cares for them, and she didn't want to be an "absent mother". She struggled along for a while, juggling childcare, schools, trains and aeroplanes.  But eventually she decided to give up the well-paid job and look for something that could be organised around the needs of her children.

Shocked by how poorly-paid part-time work in child-friendly hours can be, she set up her own business. It takes time to get a small business going, and she couldn't work 24 hours a day as many entrepreneurs do because of her children, so she lived off her savings with some assistance from state benefits (tax credits).  Eventually the savings ran out, and she started to run up debts - but the business was reaching viability and interest rates were low, so the debts weren't hard to service. 

Just as things were starting to improve, she became ill. She struggled on for a while but eventually had to have a major operation and several months off work. Because she is self-employed she received no sick pay and was therefore forced to start working again when she was not really fit to do so. The time off work left her even deeper in debt, and when she started work again business was slow to start with so debts increased even more.

Now her children are older and need her time less.  The business is doing well - it increased turnover even during the recession.  But because of the debts she is working more than full-time hours just to stay afloat. She works all the time the children are at school, then she cooks dinner, helps with homework, acts as a taxi service, attends school meetings, and all the other thousand and one things that mothers try to do for their children. Then when the children are in bed (or, often, when they are not) she does yet more work - emails, phone calls, accounts, correspondence.  She is working harder now than she did in her full-time job before she had the children, and for much less money.  And every day she checks her bank balances and tries to work out how she will pay the bills that come in tomorrow. She is an expert on cheap shopping - a regular visitor to the "reduced" counter in the supermarket - and the kids have learned not to ask her for treats.

Now and then she toys with the idea of returning to her previous job. After all, it was no harder really and much better paid. But she's been away from that industry for so long that returning would be very hard - after all, what does she have to offer now except an out-of-date skill set and considerable experience of cost-cutting and micro-management?

She used to dream that she would meet someone - a man - who would support her and her children and take this awful burden off her.  But the man she lives with earns less than she does, and is apparently happy to be supported by an overworked woman while he sits around surfing the net and watching TV.  He won't help her with the children, because they aren't his.  Nor will he help with the housework, because the children make the mess so should clear it up, shouldn't they?  He doesn't do shopping because he doesn't know what to buy, and he doesn't do washing because he doesn't know how to sort washing into different colours. He's quick to criticise her for working too hard, usually when he has had to do something like cooking the dinner because she is working.  He won't help her, but at least he pays half the mortgage and bills. Without that contribution she would lose her home. 

Interestingly, the reason she ended her marriage was because her husband sat around all day doing not very much while she worked long hours to support them both.  She wonders if the price of feminism is that some men are only too happy to be supported by strong competent women....

Is this woman typical of 21st century British women? Do you know women like her? I do....

....this woman is me.