Equal at Work

In the seventies, XX century, when the Department of Employ­ment and EEC alike said the answer to women's low pay and perhaps to poverty in general - was for 5 women 'to break through the ring-fence of special women's employment', it seemed improbable this social transformation would ever be achieved.

Hedged about by our own self-images, as much as by the oppo­sition of employers, unions and husbands, it looked as if it would be impossible for us to grasp the roles of women in a society.

Women of all types have blazed trails in new areas, so that in a matter of a few years the impossible has happened. There are women piloting British airliners, women as navigating and radio officers on ships, women detective superintendents leading murder enquiries, women military officers performing strenuous training exercises а11₍on equal terms.

The change has not been one of revolutionary speed but it has spread through a wide range of jobs. It is no longer only university graduates and the like who are breaking the boundaries of tradition. The late seventies XX с was the time when June Wilson, a cleaning lady, Alison Crompton, a night-club hostess, and Rosalba Turi,

a clothing factory presser, left their 'traditional' jobs and became crane drivers. It was the time when women resisted all their schools' pres­sure for them to become shopgirls, clerks and seamstresses, to take up electrical trades apprenticeships, to travel the roads of Europe as a rep, to become Sales Manager of the Publishing House.

Even without high-flying ambitions, work of a more masculine cast has strong advantages. At Maureen Marshall's factory in Don-caster, work had been traditionally segregated - even though, ironi­cally, all the work involved was of a 'masculine' character in a join­ery factory making 55 doors, window-frames and even housefronts. The bulk of the labour, however, was female and it was the women who supplied the joinery work which was frequently very heavy. Meanwhile the men minded cutting machines and drove fork-lift trucks at higher rates of pay.

The men were allowed day-release to become skilled apprentic­es; the women remained, in paper terms, uneducated even after 28 years in the same factory, and even when they were privately skilled in advanced cabinet-making. The men, as qualified machin­ists, had the option of moving elsewhere if better jobs presented themselves. And they progressed up the firm to become foremen and managers. The women, technically unqualified, were considered good only for the exact job they were in, however skilled they might individually be. When equal pay legislation came into force, the work done by the women, which in the pre-war past had been done by recognised qualified joiners, was downgraded by the employer to unskilled, and continued at an unequal rate to the men's. Maureen, whose foreman had encouraged her to move into the male area, was one of the few who got equal pay, and has a foot on the ladder to­wards' supervisory work, or work options elsewhere.

Another problem for women is that they consistently undervalue themselves, taking a humble viewpoint. Cristina Stuart, in fact, has learned the male technique of making her own chances. 'There really are things you have to grow out of once you're moving, that sort of feeling you have at first of just being grateful for having a place on the bench alongside the big boys, that initial wondering when you're talking to directors and managers in other companies of whether it

will come over as what you intend, or whether they'll take what you say as female chatter. You have to train yourself out of that female lack of assertiveness. At least, I don't think it is specifically female -you see it in men too - they have to make an effort when they move into management from another job, to get the style - though I think it's harder for women because it goes against a lifetime's training. And you've also got to counter that female tendency to be overhelpful, insufficiently competitive and wary.

«And it is possible. Bit by bit, when you find things work, that you are effective, that you are indubitably really there as far as work results are concerned, any feeling that you are wearing a disguise gradually melts away. Suddenly you wake up one morning and you are a manager in the whole way you react and act and think, and it is second nature. There are an awful lot of girls in jobs below their ca­pacities simply because of the way they think about themselves. In the end it all boils down to a matter of attitude».

It is evident that women can, and are, adapting themselves to male professions. But for true equality, why can there not be a fur­ther stage - unmentioned as yet -valuing women's jobs properly. Why should not a nurse or a home help be considered as valuable and paid as well as a carpenter or plumber? When this equation is solved, equality will be here.

{The Observer)