8 Ways Being A Woman Was Changed Since The 70s

Written by Saumya Gaur  • 

I have always been proud of the fact that I am a woman even though we live in what has traditionally been a man’s world. However, women like me have inherited a different world than what our predecessors have had to live in. In fact, a lot of things that we take for granted today, that we claim in the name of rights, were not granted to us until as late as the 1970s. Sure, we have come a long way from the Women’s rights movement which began in the 1800s when women were fighting for suffrage on the other side of the world. Just to put things in perspective and appreciate the good fight fought by our predecessors, I have put together a list of different ways in which the experience of being a woman has changed for the better in different parts of the world.

1. We Can Inherit Property Now

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It might seem strange to a lot of you reading this in 2018, but the fact remains that in our country, the norm was that women did not inherit any parental property. They were not considered a part of their parental family once they got married. This wasn’t just prevalent culturally, it also had the backing of law. In fact, it was only after the amendment of the Hindu Succession Act in 2005 that women gained the right to inherit property.

2. The Gender Wage Gap Has Reduced

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The gender pay disparity has come a long way from the 70s. Before you raise your arms in protest that a gender pay parity where women only earn about 79 percent of a man’s hourly wages is not a big enough gain to feature on this list, I want to draw your attention towards the changing employment patterns. Accounting for that, this gap is about 92 percent and the 8 point gap is not stemming from discrimination (1). Besides this, what we really should celebrate is the fact that in 2011, around 57 percent of Bachelor’s degrees and more than half of the Ph.D.’s and professional degrees were earned by women (2). Go girl power!

3. We Have More Agency When It Comes To Our Bodies

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Women’s bodies have always been subjected to scrutiny in this patriarchal world. Whether it’s defining the standards of their beauty or dehumanizing it by subjecting it to the male gaze, women have seldom had any control over their bodies. While we are still fighting these ideological battles, our sisters in Ireland finally won the right to make decisions for their body. Ireland, which has been a Catholic country for many years now had banned women from terminating a pregnancy except for when the expecting mother’s life was thought to be in danger. This dated law was repealed in May 2018 when Ireland voted against it in a referendum held in the country (3). Needless to say, their quiet revolution paid off.

4. We Can Drive

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A man would never think of driving as a privilege, but ask any woman in Saudi Arabia and they would tell you what a long road they had to traverse just to be able to get behind the wheels. The women of this ultra-conservative country were forbidden to drive a car up until June 2018. It was only after years of struggle and quiet protests, that this dream became a reality for them when Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman lifted this ban in June 2018 as a part of reforms to modernize the country and get more women to join the workforce (4).

5. We Can Speak Against Oppression And Harassment More Openly

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Sadly, sexual harassment has always been a part of women’s reality, be it 1970s or 2018. However, 2017–2018 was the year of women when it came to naming and shaming their abusers and their enablers. The #MeToo tide gave unprecedented power to women, such that they no longer hid in the shadows, rather they boldly called out the men who abused their positions of power and victimized women. Companies toppled, executives were fired left, right and centre. It was liberating to see the world stand in solidarity with women rather than victim shaming them (5).

6. We Can Now Fight In Wars Alongside Our Male Counterparts

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Feminism as a movement is predicated on women getting equal rights and equal opportunities. So it was a big victory for it when women were finally allowed to join in combat positions in India, courtesy: in February 2016, President Pranab Mukherjee announced that women will take up combat positions in the Indian Armed forces. Taking a lead was the Indian Air Force which commissioned a special batch of female fighter pilots (6).

7. We Can Pray Where We Want To

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It wasn’t enough that the society controlled what we ate, who we married, or what we wore; they even put restrictions on how we prayed. In India, many places of worship had restricted women’s entry to their sanctum sanctorum as a part of their tradition, such as Haji Ali in Mumbai and Sabarimala in Kerala. The Supreme Court banned this practice in 2016 and 2018 when it directed the trusts operating these places to give women access to these sites claiming that the so-called tradition infringed on women’s right to worship and went against the spirit of the constitution. While the order was implemented without any fuss in Haji Ali, it faced a lot of backlash in Sabarimala (7). Looks like things are looking up for women with the country’s highest court siding with them.

8. We Can Love The Way We Want to

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I could think of no better way to end this list, it gives me immense happiness to mention that one major way that women’s (and in this case even men’s) life has changed for the better is that they are now allowed to love whoever they want even if they happen to belong to the same gender. While same-sex couples have been accepted as “normal” in most parts of the world, India still had the penal code in place for them which criminalized same-sex carnal relations. This penal code was repealed in 2018, with the Supreme Court claiming it as a matter of personal choice thus not a matter for adjudication (8).

Haven’t we come a long way? Can you think of other ways in which women’s life has changed for the better since the 70s? Do let us know in the comments.

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