From the Past to the Present

Abstract

There would seem to be little similarity between the lives, work and education of nineteenth-century working-class girls and women and their late twentieth-century counterparts. The patriarchal ideological climate which located women in the home as their natural sphere and educated them accordingly has been replaced by one where gender equality is taken as axiomatic. British women now have equal rights in employment, in education and in marriage that are enshrined in law and public consciousness. Viewed from a liberal feminist perspective such developments are part of a cumulative process of progression whereby gender inequalities gradually are being eliminated. Women fought and won battles for the vote, for education and for access to positions of influence, and seized the advantages offered by expanding work opportunities to gain some degree of economic independence. Those following after have built on these advances to open up further opportunities for others — and so the process will continue.¹ If gender equality has not yet been achieved, we are well on the way towards its achievement.