On wanting to be a sailor

[anteros_lmc]

This extraordinary clip is part of the British Library's history learning resource Sisterhood and After: An oral history of the women's liberation movement". Sadly I can't embed the video but you can view it here and there is a transcript below.

I remember going into the junior school and this woman who was called Miss Savours who I thought was nice ‘cos she looked like my grandmother and she was very Welsh, asked us to write what we would like to be when we grew up, and I remember it so clearly. It was no surprise that all the men in my family had gone to sea and I thought this would be lovely, and what was I, about seven, eight? So I wrote, ‘I would like to be a sailor,’ that’s what I'd like to be when I grow up. And I wrote my little essay and when it came back she’d crossed out, ‘I want to be a sailor,’ and she’d added an apostrophe and added ‘sailor’s wife’. It is so appalling.

Deirdre Beddoe never did become a sailor, or indeed a sailor's wife, but she did become President of The Women’s Archive of Wales and Emeritus Professor of Women’s History at the University of Glamorgan. I wonder what Professor Beddoe would have made of the digital technology and creative industries event I participated in last week that didn't have a single female speaker?

Comments

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

Oh that is soul crushing. Not that there is anything wrong with being a sailors wife-- but to take any child and stomp on their dream that way... Oh. That makes me so angry!

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

Incredible isn't it? Wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start. The idea that a child's dreams and ambitions should be so constrained at such a young age is just infuriating. I hope we've come on a bit since then, but I suspect these attitudes persist.

[charliecochrane.livejournal.com]

It still happens, though - maybe at a more insidious level. There's a school in Andover. Picture on girls' loos door - bird with flowers and ribbons. Picture on boys' loos door - dalek. Because girls are clearly all sweetness and light and boys want to kill everybody and take over the world. Makes my blood boil.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

Infuriating isn't it? And you're right, it really is insidious.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

That is just so anger-inducing. Even if they thought she was confused and thinking Navy at a time when she couldn't have served on a ship, they could have least suggested something active and interesting for her, like when Dad got told that Racing Driver wasn't a suitable career choice but Motor Engineer was (he did both, of course, amongst other things). Then again that attitude is still around today, as I found a few years ago, when I went to a meeting of the Hampshire Porsche Owners Club and tried to drum up a group to go on a Women's Racing Driver School day.

[anteros-lmc.livejournal.com]

Oh I can quite believe it. I work in a domain where women are woefully under represented, and some of the attitudes you still come up against are really infuriating.