A few days ago I read a post on Rachel's blog entitled Today's Philosophy Class. When I read it it made be think of the way I was brought up and the role feminism played or didn't play in my life.
I should explain that I and my brother were brought up in a family of very strong females. My mother and my maternal grandmother both played a significant role in our upbringing. My paternal grandparents were dead long before I was born but the females in my father's family were also very strong: my father had been brought up by one sister and another lived in Scotland and owned an inn. She had a head for business and turned the stables into a hall used for community get togethers and weddings etc.
My brother and I were brought up to understand that women and men had different roles in that men could not have children but that the opportunities that men and women should have in life should be equal. Seeing the examples of the women so close to me as a child I just always assumed that to be the norm.
My first experience of a working environment was a hospital where men were usually doctors but all the 'bosses' in my world were female from Sisters to The Matron. After a spell as a trainee accountant in an all-male environment I made my career in local government starting in the Town Clerk's Department (the legal and administrative department) of Liverpool Corporation. It was certainly true that historically females had been shorthand typists and clerks but by the time I arrived there were women making their way up the administrative and legal ladders as well. There were many women professionals in other departments too and a female chief officer (so far as I can recall she was the only one out of 26!). In the professions, even then, women and men were paid the same rate for the same job in local government and all salaries were transparent and public.
Liverpool also had a reputation for strong female politicians with people like Bessie Braddock (and some might argue that one Bessie Braddock was more formidable that the other 139 councillors and aldermen put together).
Of course by then I was well aware that females had an uphill struggle in a predominantly male world of government and business but my attitudes had already been established.
My brother's two daughters (I only had sons) are also clever, strong and successful women and it makes me wonder how much they owe to genetics and how much they owe to the attitudes with which they were surrounded as youngsters.
