I was given a copy of ‘The Female Enoch’ in 1970. I didn’t actually burn my bra, seemed a bit too decadent for a war baby, by then a single parent with two sons and with a mother who was still saving string and ironing old gift wrap in 1994 when she could well afford to by both brand new.
I worked out Germaine Greer was already extremely well educated with degrees, when half of America was jumping on the woman’s lib bandwagon. I didn’t understand most of the book. I don’t think she meant women like me with average boring husbands and two children should seek enlightenment, get divorced, bring up children without maintenance, join the OU and juggle their previous careers – mine was in puppetry – with other means of employment.
However we all survived even if ‘enlightenment’ and new career choices came along, much later for me, than Germaine.
Currently my daughters in law claim they are ‘liberated’ and both with faithful husbands, homes, jobs and bringing up my grandchildren. All that and not a single bra being burned in the process.
Not sure what all that struggle for equality was about. So I can wield a screwdriver and saw wood, as well as sing lullabies and sew. I am about to help my partner mix concrete, to stop our crazy paving sliding down the hill into the sea and I’m well past bus pass age? All because he claims, the job far is too small for a proper builder!
How come, I ask myself, that most of my new and often well heeled friends are currently at their book groups, or having their hair done. Indeed all of them seem to have escaped ‘liberation’, if it means drilling walls and mixing concrete. Lucky them?
Ann Perrin 