Whenever I read a headline like “Women better off in the 1950’s”, I get ready to get cranky and start composing emails to the editor in my head. But as I read this article, sure I resented the title but the story itself was a surprise. A comparison between the 1950s welfare system to today finds that women in general, and especially those with working husbands have poorer access to comprehensive support in seeking employment to get and maintain jobs. I find this concerning, when you consider how far women have come since the 1950s.

The Daily Telegraph  interviewed women across Australia for the report Barriers to Women’s Employment, Women and the Recession Project and found that the main barrier to employment most women faced was the lack of help from the Federal Government job-seeking services. Not to mention Australia’s poor national maternity leave prospects, and the nightmare that locating and paying for childcare can be. Despite the huge increase in women getting and needing jobs since the 1950s, Federal Government employment support was better when women were still primarily viewed as stay-at-home mothers. 

Read the full article here. And get involved in the 250+ comment discussion that follows it. Clearly this was the right title to pick to rankle the readers enough to respond.