Another delve back to the '70s, not to Hyde Park this time but to the county where I did most of my growing up, courtesy of a copy of a local paper from that decade which turned up during a sort out at my mum-in-law's house.
There's something about looking through old newspapers from a time you've actually lived through which is both interesting but heartstopping at the same time, don't you think? Heartstopping in that it suddenly dawns on you that you really have been around for quite a long while. But interesting for seeing the house prices, the adverts, fashions, names, even just the different journalistic style and the sort of things that made the news.
We don't know exactly why my mum-in-law kept this particular issue from January 1975 (and sadly don't think she'd remember now) but it does have some quite unusual stories so perhaps that's why. For instance, the front page is dramatic - covering the hijack of a British Airways 'plane at the nearby airport - a huge news story for a small town. More amusingly, there's a report about some vandalism at the local cinema in response to it showing 'Last Tango In Paris'. There's also the very important announcement that a record shop was opening its doors in the new shopping precinct - the place where I would later spend many a Saturday afternoon and most of my pocket money, of course, and which probably deserves a blog post of its own some day.
But in January 1975 I was 11 and I don't think any of those stories meant much to me at the time. Nor was I old enough to be trawling through the job ads from the back pages. But I did yesterday! It was only then that I fully appreciated how, in 1975, I would've had to pass on quite a few job applications purely on the basis of being the wrong sex - it served as a great reminder of how much things have changed for the better in that respect. I should say that not all the ads in the paper specify a gender (or age) preference, but where they do, it really leaps out....
Still, thankfully we had ballsy women like Suzi Quatro to help address the subject of equality in 1975. Take it away, Suzi!
Quite fancy being a part time kiosk man.
ReplyDeleteIt does have a certain ring - there should be a '60s r'n'b song about it.
DeleteThey need two - I'll join you.
DeleteYour contracts are in the post!
DeleteDamn - too late!
ReplyDeleteIt will have to be Mac Markets then.
Good news for housewives!
Ah, no kiosk job then, but at least there's a special place for everyone at Mac Markets!
DeleteAs you know I too keep a lot of old magazines etc, and it's the ads that are the most interesting thing to look at now, as things have come such a long way. These would be hilarious if they weren't bona fide ads from the 70s. I often mention at my place how I really didn't appreciate how far things had come by the time we reached adulthood. I wouldn't have been able to apply for that management accounting trainee job in 1975 but by 1982 that's exactly what I became and 4 of the 6 of us who were taken on were female.
ReplyDeleteThis is the second time this week such a revelation has hit me - I had my first time back at the theatre this week to see 9 to 5, the stage musical of the 1980 film of the same name. They were playing it for laughs but of course back in 1980 no woman could rise above the role of secretary, there was no flexible working, job-shares, and we had to wear high-heeled shoes and tight suits/dresses. The film was about changing all that and I just hadn't appreciated back in the day.
Guessing you are doing a house clearance - Tough I know but good when you find some gems like this.
Yes I thought of you and your old magazines, etc. when I went through this paper, I do find this sort of thing interesting because it's exactly as it happened at the time, rather than a modern interpretation of it (easy to get false memory syndrome). As you say, it really shows how far we've come. I don't suppose many people even objected to, or spent much time considering, the inequality in these ads, we were just conditioned, it was just the norm. In the late '80s I worked in a Job Centre and for a recruitment company - even then we had to talk to some employers about their discriminatory job descriptions and get them changed. But unfortunately we knew that they would still reject applicants straight away on the grounds of being the wrong gender, even though they'd make out that it was for another reason.
DeleteGlad you managed to have a theatre trip at last and so true about the whole premise of 9-5.
Yes, the house has to be cleared and the tenancy relinquished, all rather sad as she doesn't know she's never going back home and doesn't have any concept of what's happening behind the scenes. So strange and poignant to be going through her personal effects in these circumstances - as I'm sure you completely understand!
Re the house clearance: It's tough isn't it. My mum was never back in her house after her fall so it was just as she had left it that day. The shoes she'd just bought herself that day before falling were still sitting in their box in the living room.
DeleteHope you can keep some of the personal things but very difficult to hang on to much - My loft is still full of things belonging to my mum that she'll never need again. All the best with it all.
Thanks so much Alyson, I know you get it too. Ah that is very poignant about your mum's shoes. Same scenario here re. things being left as they were the day she was taken into hospital again as she never went back home. One good thing is that, especially in this tiny house, there's not a lot of her personal stuff that we'd want to hang onto (unlike with my mum, who had lots of books and art that I wanted to keep when she died). Fortunately we're not into porcelain kittens :-) But sorting out which things she could have with her, and what we can just get rid of... well, you'll know all about that!
DeleteWow. Job adverts have certainly changed. Some of these are quite scary... but also quaintly nostalgic. The education one was the scariest!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading about that record shop in more detail...
Just grateful to be looking at them and thinking "that would never happen now"...
DeleteYes I ought to write about that record shop, very much a part of my formative years - perhaps the reason too that I ended up working in one later on.