As older women we have lived through changing times. Many taking part in this project were born during or just after the Second World War in the 1940s or 1950s.  During the war gender roles had to change, a result of necessity, women worked in jobs previously seen as man's work. When the war ended in 1945 there was pressure on both men and women to return to the previous gender roles. Women were encouraged to go back to the home to a domestic life.

 

In our 20s, 30s around the 1970s women were encouraged to have a career. However we were still expected to clean the house, cook as well as look after the children. With our parents generation girls would often have to sacrifice their dreams of a career so that the boys in the family could go on to study.  Stories from women will give us all an opportunity to see and hear how women  were and are seen by men and the society. 

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Women and Health before the National Health Service.  Women had always been on the sharp end when it came to dealing with everything from coughs and sneezes to birth, death toothache and chickenpox and the new National health service had an immediate impact on them.

 

For years their own ailments had been neglected as too expensive to treat. They had stoically accepted that they had to live with chronic conditions such as hyperthyroidism or varicose veins for example," From the book Millions like us. Page 429