PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION BY A WOMEN LIVING IN THE UNITED KINGDOM I am a woman of 59 years of age and have lived

all of my life in the United Kingdom. Many people think that British women are the most liberated in the world and do not suffer from gender discrimination, mainly because of the work of the Suffragettes in the early 20th century and the fact that British women were given the right to vote in 1928 and the first woman, Lady Astor, was elected to Parliament shortly afterwards. However, I find the attitude towards this "emancipation" to be extremely ambivalent in the daily lives of ordinary women and I will illustrate this through my own experience of being a woman in Britain in the last 59 years. I first unknowingly encountered gender discrimination as a child (although I did not know it then - I thought it was "normal") through watching and listening to my parents. My mother, an extremely intelligent lady and a trained senior school teacher, married my father, a farmer, in 1947. In those days women, especially teachers, did not work in paid employment after their marriage. My mother therefore had to leave the job she loved when she married my father and instead had to work on his farm as a labourer, picking tomatoes and packing them alongside the French labourers. She had children, my sister and I, and was also expected to look after us - but as my mother was so busy working on the farm we were left to our own devices and used to play in the fields and with the children of the French farmworkers. After my parents' marriage, my father became a violent, abusive alcoholic - nowadays the majority of woman would leave their husbands but in the 1950s divorce was absolutely unthinkable and would have brought great shame upon my mother - she would have become virtually unemployable and therefore unable to look after us or provide a home for us. Therefore, she had no option but to stay with my father and be bullied and subjugated to abuse of all types. My father was also jealous of his two daughters and did not treat us very well, either. As we were so young, we thought this was all perfectly normal behaviour by men towards women.

When it was time for my sister and I go to school, my father sent us to a private Convent school - my mother had absolutely no say in the matter and had to acquiesce to my father's wishes for us. He did not care what the academic standard of this school was like, after all we were "only" girls and he sent us to this Convent school because they had a reputation for producing well mannered, marriageable young ladies. When I passed my first set of exams, at ordinary level, I wanted to continue my education and study for the advanced level exams which would have taken two extra years at school. I wanted to attend university and study art. However, my father absolutely refused to let me stay at school and sent me to a secretarial college. Again, my mother had no say in the matter and neither did I. I did not want to be a secretary, but my father, a rather uneducated man, thought it was a very "clever" thing to be and a brilliant career, when in fact being a secretary is not having a career, it is merely having a job until such time as one gets married and stops working and has children to look after. While I was at Secretarial College, my father decided (again, without consulting my mother or allowing her any opinion in the matter) to sell the farm and buy a hotel. My mother, as my father's chattel, had to follow him to the hotel where, again, she was expected to work very hard. She had to rise at 6 a.m. and frequently would not get to bed until 3 a.m. My father, of course, did no work at all in the hotel as there was a large bar in it and he spent most of his time in there drinking when he was not unconscious in bed through alcohol. My sister worked for a meagre wage in the hotel and was valuable "moral support" to my mother when he was being abusive to her in front of all the hotel guests. When I finished secretarial college, there was no work for me in the hotel, so I obtained a job in an office of an import/export firm. Girls who worked in offices were obliged to follow a very strict dress code - no trousers, wear stockings (or tights) and look neat and attractive at all times and apart from their typing and shorthand, wait on their employers with cups of tea and coffee whenever they demanded it. In my first job I was subjected to a great deal of sexual harassment by one of the Directors - this was considered quite normal and secretaries were expected to tolerate it and even enjoy the attention. Well, I did not enjoy this at all - the particular Director who was pestering me kept

putting his arm around me and saying suggestive things. He would even try and wear me down with alcohol, by putting a very strong gin and tonic on my desk for me to drink towards the end of the afternoon, especially if it looked as if I would have to work overtime and therefore be alone with him. I hardly used to touch the drink, or I would pour it away and pretend I had drunk it. These unwanted advances by him eventually led me to hand my notice in and leave my first job. I had begun to get extremely nervous about being alone in the office with him, because he would get very very close to me and try and kiss me, which I did not want at all. There was no-one I could complain to about this man's behaviour and the other Director's would not have believed me anyway, because he would have denied it and as he was a male Director they would have believed him rather than a member of the female office staff. I decided to do temporary office work for a while until I found a job which I liked and was eventually offered a job with a firm of accountants. I was summoned into the office of the Senior Director and told that I could work there permanently and the salary would be X. There was no negotiation involved with the level of salary I would be given and, indeed, there was never ever any negotiation in my salary in any subsequent job I had - I was, after all, merely a female secretary and my position in any firm was not considered important - if I did not like the salary the only option was to look for another job which advertised a higher salary. I met the first major "love" in my life at this time and this time I encountered discrimination of a different type - racial discrimination. He was Jewish and I fell in love very deeply with him. However, as a man it was he who decided when we should meet and what we would do. He also expected me to babysit for his son from a previous marriage, which i would willingly do. He was ostensibly going out to play bridge while I babysat his son, but in fact he was courting Jewish women, who would provide a Jewish home and background for his son. When I found out, I was deeply upset and we stopped seeing each other. I realised he had just "used" me as a babysitter for his son and the fact that I was so young and loved him so much made this even easier for him to do. At about this time, my father decided to sell the hotel, again my mother was not consulted. In fact, she was secretly pleased because she would get exhausted working in the hotel while my father did nothing. My father was only 49, but he bought a house of his choosing and never

worked again. When it came to physically moving from the hotel to the new house, my mother had to do all of the work which moving entailed my father did absolutely nothing. My sister, by this time, had married and was not living at home anymore and so it was only my father, my mother and I who moved into this new house. When my parents moved into the new house my father miraculously gave up drinking - probably because the temptation of the bar was not there. However, this did not improve his temperament - my mother was still at his beck and call all day and had to make him every cup of coffee he demanded. Being sober also turned him into a very controlling man and this extended to me as well as my mother. If I brought a boyfriend home whom he did not approve of, he would ban him from the house - it was his house after all, and he never let my mother or I forget it. He would sneer to my mother that he was providing her with "a life of luxury" when in fact he was not. He kept her very short of money and hardly ever bought her new clothes and never bought her or me a birthday present. Yet he expected my mother and I (and my sister) to buy him birthday presents. As for clothes, he spent a fortune on expensive clothes for himself, while my mother would be wearing second hand clothes given to her by her sisters. My father would buy himself expensive jewellery, spectacles, cameras, radios - anything he wanted, because it was after all "his" money while my mother was denied any of these luxuries, despite the fact that she had worked so hard on the farm and then the hotel and now catered to his every whim at the new house. She was, after all, merely "his wife" and had to accept whatever crumbs he gave her. My sister, meanwhile, was very unhappy in her marriage. Her husband had become an alcoholic and could not keep a job because of this. Thankfully, by then it was easier to get a divorce and so she divorced him. To make it quicker and easier, she told him she did not want any money from him and he left the Island to return to his native country, which was Austria. He did, however, leave many debts behind, which my sister, as his wife, was expected to pay. These debts were not incurred by anything other than my sister's husband's love of expensive cars and alcohol. I settled into my new job, but I was expected to do copious amounts of unpaid overtime - sometimes working until 8 p.m. at night and never

having a lunch hour. One of the Directors would try and make advances to me, particularly at office parties, but I would manage to keep him at arm's length as I had experience in such things - at least it was a much larger office, so I could avoid him more easily and I did not work for him anyway, so had little contact with him on a day to day basis. One day in the summer, my sister and her boyfriend suggested I join them for a picnic in a secluded beach. I arrived early and whilst waiting for my sister a man started talking to me. At first i thought he was very pleasant, but then he started to act in a very odd way and kept changing his swimming costume and in the end he went for a swim with no clothes on! I was beginning to get alarmed but I was expecting my sister to come soon. However, when he had finished his swim he walked up the beach to where I was standing, by a large flat rock, and threw himself against me. I pushed him aside and then to my relief my sister appeared. The man ran away, collecting his clothes as he went. I told my sister and her boyfriend what had happened and we discussed what to do about it. We decided, however, that there was nothing we could do - all i had was a physical description of the man - no name, he hadn't told me where he worked - nothing. I was still working for the firm of accountants at this time, working very very hard. One day, I was late back from lunch by 20 minutes because I had been helping a girlfriend choose furniture for her new home - she was getting married and wanted help in the furniture shop. After we had finished, she walked with me back to where I worked and we started giggling and by the time I got to where I worked I was almost helpless with laughter. One of the Directors was coming out of the building at the time and he gave me a rather stern look. The next day, my immediate boss called me into his office and confronted me about being late back from lunch and asked if it was because I had been in the pub drinking? I was insulted, especially after all the overtime I had done and didn't bother to explain what I had been doing - I simply went to my desk and typed a letter of resignation and left. I subsequently got a job with another firm of accountants, where the work was even harder - in this job I had to frequently work until 10 p.m. at night. One day, after weeks of extra hard and pressurised work, I collapsed at the photocopier machine. The employers did not see this, but the other secretaries helped me to my chair and told me to go to the Doctor. I made an appointment to see him that night after work and

when I saw the doctor he examined me and asked me how much work I had been doing and when I told him, he said that i was physically and emotionally exhausted with all the pressure I had been under and told me I must go to bed for three days and have a complete rest. He gave me a medical certificate so I could prove to my employers I was not merely taking time off work. After three days, I returned to work and was called into the Board Room where i was promptly given a month's notice, as I obviously could not cope with the job! I don't think anyone else could have coped with that job. I worked my month's notice whilst looking for another job, but the recession was on (this was in the late 1990s) and I could not find another job. On the day I was due to leave, the Chairman called me into the Boardroom and asked me to stay at my job with the company because he said "we cannot do without you". At any other time, I would have refused to stay, but I could not find another job, so I told him I would stay. When I walked into the other office afterwards, the employer who had sacked me gave me a wink and said words to the effect that it was he who had made the Chairman change his mind, which was nonsense. During this time I had met my second love - I fell in love with him very quickly because he was so attentive and loving and also very intelligent. We decided to move into a flat together and looked for a flat together. However, when we found a flat he insisted that the lease should be in my name, so I naively paid the deposit for the flat, paid the rent and took out a loan for the furniture - all in my name. I was blinded by love and he knew this and was exploiting the situation. Soon after we moved in together, he lost his job. The recession was still going on and he applied for hundreds of jobs, but could never seem to find one. He also became less attentive and loving towards me, which hurt me deeply, but I thought he was just depressed because he could not find a job. I soon discovered that he was a very heavy drinker and also a compulsive gambler. He had no money because of his heavy gambling. I was supporting him completely and paying for everything out of my secretary's wage - the rent, the repayment on the loan, food everything. However, I still loved him and when he kept asking me for money, I used to give it to him. Of course, all this money went on gambling - and whatever he won gambling he spent in the pub. I was at my wit's end and deeply in debt because of all this, when he suddenly died of a heart attack. The post mortem revealed that he had been a very sick man, which he had not told me about. I found out that the CVs he had been sending out to prospective employers were deliberately

deeply flawed, so when employers checked on references etc., they would not give him a job. He did this because he knew that working would kill him and he had courted me and won my love because he could see that I was a kind hearted woman who would support him if he did not work. On the night he died, I waited in the casualty department for news from the Doctors - I didn't think for a minute he was going to die, because he had hidden from me how ill he was. Every time a doctor or a nurse came through to where I was waiting, I asked the doctor how he was and they would answer that he was fine and that they were "working on him". A doctor came through and very casually asked me if he had any family nearby and I replied that his mother lived a few minutes drive away and he said that perhaps it would be a good idea if she came to the hospital. I naively did not think there was anything strange in this request and telephoned the mother and asked her to come to the hospital. As soon as she arrived at the hospital, the doctor rushed through, ignoring me, and spoke directly to my boyfriends mother. I heard him tell her that they had been trying to resuscitate him for a long time, but they knew all along there was no hope for him and had eventually given up. I had been sitting in the hospital for hours - the woman who had loved him, lived with him, supported him and called the ambulance to bring him into the hospital but I did not count for anything - because I was not married to him. I was totally ignored by everyone, so I quietly left the hospital and drove home, alone. I phoned my sister when I got home and she came to the flat immediately, where she was a tower of strength to me and, indeed, stayed at the flat for 10 days to get me through the initial shock. My immediate employer, the one who had sacked me for collapsing from overwork, was away on holiday thankfully and so I spoke to the Chairman and told him what had happened and he told me to take as much time as I wanted off work. I eventually went back to work after three weeks, when my employer had returned from holiday and went into his office. All he said was, I'm sorry about your boyfriend, but don't worry, I will keep you busy and take your mind off it. I couldn't believe it! Frankly the last thing I could do properly was work - I found it impossible to concentrate. Six months later my father died. Extravagant to the last, he had arranged his own funeral once he had been told he was dying of lung cancer. He had chosen the most expensive coffin and the top of the coffin was completely covered with red roses. When the Will was read

and I examined his bank accounts (which he had always hidden from my mother), I found he had left very very little money and so my mother had to live very frugally. A few months later, my health collapsed completely with the stress and grief of my boyfriend's death and all the stress of trying to get my mother's affairs organised so that she could stay in her "luxury" home without moving. In the space of about three months I had numerous infections, including pneumonia - this meant I had to have a lot of time off work, but I kept sending in medical certificates and went into work between infections. However, after having bronchitis for two weeks, I returned to work to find my desk had been cleared and all files, address books etc had been removed. I went into my employer's office and he called two other Directors in the Chairman had gone away for two months, otherwise events might have been different) and I was told that I could stay with the firm only if I accepted a 6,000 drop per year in salary. I told them this was totally unacceptable, given the amount of work I had to do and so they told me that if I would not work under those terms I should write a letter of resignation. I refused to write the letter and insisted they dismiss me formally, but they had obviously taken advice from their lawyers and absolutely insisted that I write the letter. I was still feeling a bit weak from the last infection, so gave in and wrote the letter and left. I started temping again, but over the next couple of months, more health problems re-surfaced. Some years previously, I had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but the disease had been so dormant that there was serious doubt as to whether I had the disease. I woke up one morning to find that I could hardly walk and called the doctor, who had me admitted into hospital. The neurologist was called in and he confirmed it was the multiple sclerosis. I had large doses of cortisone and was sent home - now with a walking stick. Three weeks later I woke up to find that I could hardly see - everything was blurred and I had no colour vision at all. Again, the neurologist confirmed this was multiple sclerosis. I remained 75% blind for three months and my walking did not improve either - my working life was over at the age of 47.

I therefore had to apply for benefits in order to be able to eat and pay the rent. These benefits were granted, but I was frequently visited by members of the Benefits Office to check whether I had a man living with me. They wrote to me continually asking me to confirm that I lived entirely on my own - this was because if they could prove I had a man friend living with me, my benefits could be stopped. I eventually managed to convince them that I lived entirely on my own and began having visits from the Welfare Officer. One day she told me "The best thing you can do is find a man to come and live here so that he can support you"!!!!! In other words, she recognised that the benefits were appalling and that it would be better to prostitute myself by finding someone to live with who would support me. I would not do this and struggled with the meagre benefits I did receive, until I could not cope any more and decided to go back home and live with my Mother. It was fortuitous that i did, because a year after i had moved back, my sister died of cirrhosis of the liver. She had inherited my father's alcoholism, although she had always managed to hold the same job down for 30 years. About 18 months before her death, she suddenly decided to marry a man she hardly knew - the cirrhosis was beginning to affect her brain, or she would never have made that decision. This man proceeded to strip her bank account of money and when she had no more cash, gave her no money to buy clothes, make up etc. When she died, it was revealed that she had shares to the amount of 35,000 which she had earned as bonuses for the firm she had worked for 30 years - the new bereaved husband pocketed this with glee. My sister had obviously told him about this and he knew her state of health was poor so married her for the sole reason of inheriting the shares. Two months later, the "heartbroken" husband made advances towards me, which I repulsed straight away. He then married another woman. This was within a year of my sister's death. However, he then died of cancer very quickly and the new wife inherited all his money, including my sister's 35,000. My mother was never the same after my sister died - she had constant ill health from the day of her funeral and I now became her carer. One night she had a bad stroke, which caused her to have severe dementia and she is now in a nursing home.

Obviously I had to sell the house, buy a flat for myself from the proceeds, and invest the rest of the money in order to fund the nursing home fees. The house realised a large sum of money as it was a large house and had been bought 35 years earlier and therefore appreciated in value from 35,000 to 700,000. After buying the flat, there was a considerable sum of money to be invested and this has enabled me to pay Mum's nursing home fees and not have to worry about money anymore. I find that with this newly found independence as far as finances are concerned, I do not encounter nearly as much gender discrimination as I used to and am treated with much more respect by the authorities and men in general. Perhaps this proves that gender discrimination is all about money and keeping women in a position where they have to depend on men and therefore are able to be bullied and badly treated by men. I believe this is what gender discrimination all boils down to in the end - money and power.
Cynthia Rabet Jersey, UK