The 1944 Education Act established the principle of free education for all from primary to secondary, but at eleven plus there were quotas for admission to grammar school.


Late 60s and early 70s


In 1968, came the second wave of feminism. The women’s movement of the second part of the century began to bubble in the mid sixties. For anyone other than the upper classes, childcare and the running of the home was still considered woman’s work, forcing women to choose between their talents and their family lives. Women were saying that what is most personal is political and they were questioning and redefining their roles as wives, mothers, workers and lovers in the light of their own experience, rather than through men’s eyes. To be a young woman in the late sixties and early seventies was unimaginably exciting. For example at the BBC women weren’t allowed to wear trousers.


The f – word


What has characterised the modern women’s movement has been its ability to put everything up for discussion. And the crucial question that has been most hotly debated has been what it means to be a woman. They have examined what they wear. Shall it be dunfarees, trousers, long skirts, short skirts, lipstick high heels? Do women go out to work or stay at home and raise children? Whichever you choose. Can girls study maths and physics? Of course they can. In every area, in every sphere women have attended to their kind and made a difference. The revolution has not been without its casualties. Relationships between men and women have frequently been stretched on the rack of unmatched expectations. Men have frequently been reluctant to embrace women’s new found autonomy and have ridiculed new hopes and aspirations, clinging like dinosaurs to the old ways where man was master and woman served. Men at the end of the century still earn on average 30 per cent more than women and research carried out in 1999 by the Equal opportunities Commission has shown that this has nothing to do with the fact that many women chose part time work to enable them to juggle their family and their work. …feminism – known in some quarters as the f – word - has become almost too shameful to admit. Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who’ll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings? It’s an echo of what Rebecca West said in 1913, “I myself have never able to find out precisely what a feminist is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”.