Women in the Home Flashcards
(15 cards)
Describe 5 daily chores of a housewife
- Working: From 5:30-10PM. Prepare breakfast.
- Cleaning: ‘Blackleading’ fire place and scrubbing the floor daily.
- Bath: Hand filled with water boiled with a kettle. Tipped out into the back garden.
- Washing: Weekly ‘wash day’ in the scullery. Clothes washed by hand and dried using hand drier. Iron heated over fire.
- Shopping: Done daily as no fridge. Food was budgeted and woman went without food
Describe women in upper class households
- Dance and dine until married
- Little formal education
- Learnt piano and dance
- Expected to remain innocent when engaged
- Affairs were common
- Social code made it acceptable as long as you ‘put up a front’
Describe men in upper class households
- Head of the house
- Referred to as ‘sir’ by own children as well
- Special permission required to enter his study
- Men with certain status kept a mistress
Describe servants in Edwardian households
- Chef: Responsible for food and shopping. Helped by scullery maids.
- Butler: Answered front door and waited on family.
- Housemaids: Cleaning
- Footmen: Laborious work and heavy lifting
How did the 30s depression affect the working class?
- Welsh mines forced to shut so people lost jobs
- 25% unemployed
- Wage cuts for mines remaining open
- Strikes and protests
- Years spent on the ‘dole’
Describe the Means Test
- All valuables sold
- No help from family members
- Government official would tell you to sell items
How did women ‘make ends meet’ in the depression?
- Buy cheapest cuts of meat
- Hand-me-down clothes
- Small jobs like sewing
- Create clothes from potato sacks
- Women went without food
- ‘Soup kitchens’ where richer wives fed poorer people
Describe the Beveridge Report
- 1942 sent to write a report about the cities problems
- Known as ‘Beveridge’s 5 Giants’
- Want aka poverty
- Squalor aka overcrowding
- Idleness aka unemployment
- Ignorance aka lack of education
- Disease
What were the legislations that came along with the Welfare State?
- Family Allowance Act 1946: Campaigned by Eleanor Rathbone. 25p per child. NOT MEANS TESTED so all mothers elligable.
- National Insurance Act 1946: Benefit for interruption in earnings i.e. unemployment, pregnancy, old age. State pension at 60 for women, 65 for men.
- National Health Act 1946: Aneurin Bevan created the NHS for free access to dentists, doctors, and optoms.
How did the NHS benefit the lives of women?
- Fewer worries about family
- Specialised care for women
- Birth control = better quality of life
- More independence
- Break away from traditional role
Describe the development of birth control
- Marie Stopes wrote ‘Married Love’ in 1918
- 4000 women dying in childbirth per year
- 1921 Stopes opened a birth control clinic for advice
- 1930s authorities allowed to give cont. advice
- 1961 married cont. 1974 all women
- 1967 Abortion act within 28 weeks
Describe the changes in family patterns since the 20th century
- Average children from 6 to 2 due to contraception
- Increase in cohabiting couples 9% to 16% due to marriage not being as important
- Increase in single person household due to divorce act and therefore more mixed families
- 40% children born to unmarried couples
- First child born to 30+ mum
How was housing improved in the 60s?
- 1M council homes and 2.5M private homes
- Central heating and indoor bathrooms
- Ventilated and cleaner
- Labour saving devices like vacuum, washing machine
Positives and negatives of labour saving devices
✓ More family time
✓ Increased leisure time to persue interests
✓ Take up a better career
✓ Improved health
x Forced wife to work
x Created double role
x Higher expectations
Describe the impact of magazines, TV/radio and fitness
- Magazines: Dieting, photoshop, ideal woman, body image issues
- TV/Radio: Aimed target audience, politicians on daytime media shows to get female vote
- Fitness: Body image, female sport
