Shelley Gibson started work as a clerical assistant at John Lewis in 1979
Employment Rights |
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 Chamknitt 1977 |
The 1975 Employment Protection Act introduced important rights for working women who were expecting a baby. Women with two years service with their employers were entitled to six weeks paid maternity leave and could return to their job up to 29 weeks after the birth. Women could not be sacked if they were pregnant. That meant Shelley could happily take time off to have Angie in 1983.
In the 1970s and 1980s, men started to become more helpful in the home, particularly those who’d lost their jobs while their partners were still in work. This was the case of Bobby, who lost his job at the docks in East London the year after Angie was born. During the 1980s, unemployment rose to three million people. During some years, 16 out of every 100 workers didn’t have a job. The situation differed from the mass unemployment of the 1930s, though. When Fred Davis’s dad lost his job in a Lancashire coal mine in the 1930s that left a whole family without income. At least now, there was often two earners in a home; the man and the woman.
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