Changing Times: The New Look and the Swinging Sixties - from the Hearth (Honno Voices)

Featuring vital firsthand testimonies from women of all walks of life from important points in history, and giving an intimate portrayal of real women’s lives in different eras, this book looks at the 1950s and 1960s. Like many other aspects of life, education in these decades for most girls still meant segregation, not just by gender but also by age. Grammar school set a girl up for life, while secondary modern meant a girl was one of the workers. Many women still lost their jobs upon marriage and certainly lost them if they became unmarried mothers. But the ’50s and ’60s also brought rock-n-roll, rising hemlines, and the first signs of female emancipation since the vote. Moving, funny, brave and, at times, deeply shocking, this anthology brings together a dazzling collection of experiences female writers, focusing on everyday life during this transformative period.

Deirdre Beddoe is a writer, broadcaster, historian, and emeritus professor of women’s history at the University of Glamorgan. She is the author of Discovering Women’s History: A Practical Guide, Back to Home and Duty: Women in Britain Between the Wars, and Out of the Shadows: A History of Women in Twentieth-Century Wales. She is also editor of Parachutes and Petticoats: Welsh Women Writing on the Second World War.