New book chronicles Washington women's movement and quest for equality during New Town's formative years
Washington residents Maureen Marsden, Marilyn Charlton and Anne Staines talk about the new book they have helped to create entitled 'The Time Of Our Lives'.
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00:00Okay, I'm going to start by asking about what the rationale is behind putting the book together now.
00:05Well, there were a few of us meeting together voluntarily, who had been part of Washington women's education back in the 70s and the 80s,
00:15but also part of WA more broadly, because WA has changed and a lot of volunteers wanted to carry on meeting.
00:24So we talked about lots of ideas to do with the sort of education that went on in the 80s, 90s, and we started to focus in on Washington.
00:36And we had a contact with Jude Murphy, who's working for Washington Heritage Partnership,
00:44and she suggested that we could maybe focus on the work we'd done in Washington to coincide with the Washington New Town 60 Years celebration events.
00:54So that's what we decided to do.
00:57Obviously, you know, a lot of the courses you're running were in the 70s and in the early 80s.
01:01Just how different a time was it for women in Washington at that point?
01:05Well, it was very different. I mean, in different many ways nationally, but different for people who moved into the new town.
01:14Many of them had moved from other areas.
01:17There was an influx of population, you know, from 20,000 to 60,000, and people found themselves in new villages.
01:26Often it was the husband who was working, gone off to work with the car.
01:30They were in a village with young children. There didn't seem to be any courses.
01:35What would they do? What were they going to do when their children came back to school?
01:40So there was a real need for something, and it was different times then.
01:45Around about that time, I went to buy a washing machine and was told I couldn't buy one without my husband's permission.
01:55It doesn't seem that long ago, but things have changed very much.
02:00Just how important is it that we document this period in history as part of Washington 60?
02:04When we started, I've lived in Washington all my life in a village called Fatfield.
02:12And when I was young, around about 1968-67, we didn't have childcare.
02:21It wasn't accepted that a lady went back to work. She stayed at home.
02:26And what we're thinking now is there's a lot of people who, through the COVID and the economic decline,
02:34that they're trapped in their homes just the way we were way back in the late 60s, early 70s.
02:40So some of the lessons and some of the experiences that we now look back on and think,
02:45weren't we lucky to be there? We would love to give that opportunity back to some people
02:50who are experiencing lots of problems today.
02:53Because through those experiences and those people coming together, people's confidence grew,
02:58their expectations became wider, and they actually succeeded in many things
03:04that they would never have dreamt they could have ever done.