Britain: An official handbook > 1977

20
Social
Attitudes
Leisure
Trends
BRITAIN 1977: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
take paid work until retirement at 60. Even while she has the care of children,
her work is lightened by household appliances and convenience foods. This
significant change in women’s life pattern has only recently begun to have its
full effect on their economic position. Up to about 20 years ago some 85 per
cent of girls left school at the minimum age of 15 and most of them took a
full-time job. However, when they married, they usually left work at once and
often never returned to it. Thus, single women, nearly half of them under 25,
formed some 56 per cent of the female labour force. Today the school-leaving
age is 16, many girls stay at school after that age, and, though women tend to
marry younger, more married women stay at work at least until shortly before
their first child is born. Very many more subsequently return to full- or part-
time work. Such changes have led to a new relationship in marriage, with the
husband accepting a greater share of the burdens and satisfactions of family life,
and with both partners sharing more equally in financing and running the home
according to their respective capacities and interests. However, in spite of these
major social changes and the removal of practically all sex discrimination in
political and legal rights, the Government believes that tradition and prejudice
still handicap women in their working careers and personal lives. Accordingly,
major legislation promoting equal opportunities for women and equal pay has
recently been brought into force.
Social attitudes have continued to change over the past 20 or 30 years and there
has developed, for example, a more informed tolerance of certain types of
deviant behaviour and an unwillingness to penalise individuals with particular
problems. This spirit of toleration is reflected in the growing popular sympathy
for the difficulties of the unmarried mother, for instance, and in the passing
of more liberal laws on such matters as abortion, divorce and homosexuality.
Similarly, changes in the law applying to young offenders reflect the view that
it is unreasonable to treat children who have broken the law as fundamentally
different from children in trouble of other kinds.
This liberalising trend is balanced by a recognition that, in some areas,
restrictions on certain freedoms must be extended in the interests of society as a
whole—hence legislation on race relations and the control of dangerous drugs
and firearms. There are also fears in some quarters that liberal attitudes towards
social problems have failed to produce adequate solutions and that a more
disciplined approach is necessary.
Relationships between the generations are undergoing considerable change,
with the result that there is today a greater readiness on the part of children and
young people to criticise traditional institutions and to seek more influence in
shaping society. This desire for personal involvement is manifest not only
among those prepared to demonstrate for or against certain courses of action
and to bring pressure on the responsible authorities, but also among the
increasing numbers of young people who offer their services to help the old, the
disabled, the illiterate, and others in need.
Most people have considerably more free time, more ways in which to spend it
and higher real incomes than had previous generations. Agreed hours of full¬
time work are usually from 39 to 40 hours a wreek, although many manual
workers actually work somewhat longer (about 45 on average) because of
voluntary overtime work, while the hours worked by women and girls average
somewhat less. Most employees work a five-day week.
Almost all full-time employees are entitled to a paid holiday each year in
addition to public holidays and in practically every case the minimum period