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‘Hello BOYS\u00a0<\/strong>and girls’<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thinking back 60 or more years prompted some particular memories on a long male dominated journey through the decades.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ‘I wonder she dare show her face here after what she\u2019s done.’ \u00a0Crikey, she must have been very naughty I thought naively.\u00a0 I was listening to a conversation between a mother and the local Catholic priest at the youth club; I was 12 years old.\u00a0 The priest had nodded his head in agreement and, those views were eventually broadcast, deliberately and within earshot of the young people.\u00a0 The priest told the girls in the group of the importance to remain, ‘pure for your husband.’ \u00a0 I hadn\u2019t really understood the meaning of his warnings and had to ask.\u00a0 The teenager was pregnant and had ‘disgraced her family and the church.’ Nothing was said about the youth; the focus remained with the teenage girl.\u00a0The girl was sent away, I didn\u2019t know where until years later.\u00a0 She had been sent to stay at a convent to have her baby.\u00a0 The baby had been adopted; I often wondered if she had agreed to this and thought of her when watching the Judy Dench film, (2013) ‘Philomena’.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Priests continue to outrank nuns within the catholic hierarchy.\u00a0There were no women bishops in the church of England until 2015; men continue to be the superior controlling force.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ‘Wait till your dad gets home.’ \u00a0It was quite common for mothers to delegate the ‘telling off’ when kids were naughty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Managers in shops and banks were generally men when I was a girl.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The boys at school were encouraged to consider a career and the girls were prepared for children; cooking cleaning and sewing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My uncle John lived and worked in London throughout my childhood. He was a member of a gentleman\u2019s club and excluded women. Fortunately, this has been successfully challenged in the UK.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ‘Miss World’ competition was such an important social event on TV.\u00a0 Women continue to enter beauty competitions and are judged competitively on their looks; often by men.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Advertising continues to promote holidays with scantily clad perfectly formed females.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I lost touch with my lovely friend.\u00a0 Her husband had been offered a new post in the NHS.\u00a0 He accepted the job without any discussion and told her that they would be moving to another part of the country.\u00a0 She did not want to leave, she was happy and enjoyed her work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I was one of a few women to join the male dominated ambulance service.<\/p>\n When my uniform was issued; I was given a pair of mens shoes.<\/p>\n The male officer said; ‘If you want to join our service (male dominated) you can\u2019t expect anything different.’ Thank goodness things are different now.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is worth noting, that priests continue to outrank nuns within the catholic hierarchy.<\/p>\n There were no women bishops in the church of England until 2015; men continue to a superior controlling force.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the 1970s I told my mother-in-law about the levels of domestic violence in my marriage to her son; ‘that\u2019s something you\u2019ll have to put up with, you\u2019ll get used to it’ was her answer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n A woman has to prove that she is a virgin before marriage in some cultures.\u00a0 Hymen repair surgery is to be banned in the UK.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It must be 30 years since I was involved in the care of a beautiful little girl. She died after her genitals had been ‘cut.’ \u00a0Her mother and aunt had used rose clippers to perform the procedure.\u00a0 She was 7 years old; her family believing that ‘no man would want her\u2026’<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I found out on ‘Women’s Hour’ on BBC Radio 4 the other day that clinical medical instruments continue to be made predominantly for male surgeons in the UK.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ‘I want my wife to have a cesarean; she\u2019ll be too big for me.’<\/p>\n This was the first time I had been witness to this kind of reasoning; I hadn\u2019t experienced this clinical dilemma before. There was no clinical reason for the patient to have the cesarean.\u00a0She was not consulted and was a passive witness to her husbands demands.\u00a0 The clinical staff delivered the baby normally and the husband then asked the medical team to perform a vaginoplasty; the team declined and the man complained , unsuccessfully.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ‘It\u2019s a man\u2019s world’ (Brown & Newsome) sings Karise Eden; it was and it really still is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”580″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text] ‘Hello BOYS\u00a0and girls’ Thinking back 60 or more years prompted some particular memories on a long male dominated journey through the decades. ‘I wonder she dare show her face here after what she\u2019s done.’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heartburnwomen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bernice, UK<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n