The New Woman Wales in the Eighties

ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYS

In the '80s, a new generation of women came of age.

Inspired by their dreams and ambitions,

they would help revolutionise Wales.

MUSIC CONTINUES

Women were saying, "We're going out to work, we're going to earn

"the money and we're going to have a say in what we do with our lives."

In the '80s when I struggled with business, to be honest,

the learning curve was more like a line, straight up.

It was like I was learning so much every day.

It empowered me, it enabled me and it gave me the courage

to act on my convictions, that's what the '80s did for me.

This is the extraordinary story of a decade that saw the emergence

and empowerment of the New Woman.

SYNTHESISER MUSIC PLAYS

MUSIC: Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics

In 1980s Wales, women looked to the future in a society

with greater individual choice than ever before.

Their growing sense of independence meant

they wanted much more from life than their mothers.

Whether married or not, if a woman wanted a career,

she soon hit the glass ceiling in a male-dominated world.

# Sweet dreams are made of this

# Who am I to disagree?

# I travel the world... #

Even in the music industry,

there were few women who made it to the top.

But one of the most successful of the 1980s was our very own Bonnie Tyler.

# Cos we'll never be wrong

# Together we can take it to the end of the line

# Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time

# All of the time

# I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark

# We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

# I really need you tonight

# Forever's going to start tonight...#

I always loved music. Music was in our family.

My mother was an incredible singer.

She was an opera singer but she was so shy.

There was no way that she would, you know...

She'd face the wall if she sang.

My mother always used to say to me when I was younger,

"Believe in yourself and do it

"because no-one else is going to do it for you."

And I think I probably wanted more out of life than

a lot of people in my mother's era,

wanted children, a family.

I wanted a career, you know?

# I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night

# He's got to strong and he's got to be fast

# And he's got to be fresh from the fight

# I need a hero. #

The powerful ballads of Bonnie Tyler provided

a soundtrack for the life of the new woman and her independent spirit.

After she married, Joy King worked as a barmaid in Swansea.

I personally liked going to work.

It got me out the house. You met people.

I could buy my own clothes, my own perfume,

my make-up, my shoes. Whatever I wanted,

I could go and buy because I had worked for it

and that gave you a sense of independence and a bit of confidence, really.

The pub trade was very kind to me, very good to me.

You were really partying.

You were being paid to party.

It's just there was a bar between you,

and we had wonderful times.

You had theme nights.

You know, we had French night and fancy dress

and Halloween. Any excuse for a party, it was there.

MUSIC: Girls Just Want To Have Fun by Cindi Lauper

Women were exploring new ways of expressing their identity.

# And girls, they wanna have fun

Oh, girls just wanna have fun... #

Power dressing and big hair became the fashion style that

defined the decade.

In the '80s, it was massive big shoulders,

with the massive big curly hair.

Everybody thought I had a perm and that I caused the ozone

layer with the lacquer, you know? But my hair was never permed.

It was always kept shaggy

and then it was loads of, you know, stiff gel

and I used to scrunch it and I used to make it as big as possible, you know?

I used to love wearing the big padded leather jackets.

It made me feel powerful

and you felt you can compete with the boys.

# Rosa had a lover on the shady side of town

# Tito, he was king of the streets... #

Wearing the right clothes

instantly boosted women's confidence and authority.

Now they felt a match for any man,

and they avidly followed the icons of the style.

You had Joan Collins and Dynasty. Oh, we all loved it.

And every garment you bought had shoulder pads.

You'd buy a top and it had shoulder pads, you'd buy a jacket and it had shoulder pads.

And I loved every moment of it.

I'd go to work dressed in a suit and a jacket.

Everybody did, and it was just absolutely wonderful.

Lady Diana then, she brought in the frilly blouse

and the tux look and the black trousers.

Oh, well, that was it.

I went out and bought the black trousers, the tux.

Up until then, you see, we'd always worn skirts.

Well, I felt I was the height of sophistication

in this pie frill blouse. And Lady Di had a bow tie.

And I think clothes made a statement.

And, for me, if I looked good, then I felt good.

And it gave me confidence.

# Just a little divine intervention... #

For the summer, I have a few silk dresses, which, again, are classics.

And they...they have to wear... we have to look after them.

Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister,

was another woman known for her power dressing.

Though divisive, she was an inspiration for many women,

especially those in business, like Marianne Pettifore.

I was very impressed with Maggie Thatcher.

Not necessarily her politics,

I can't say I agreed with everything,

but I definitely thought, if she could run a country,

then why can't I run my own business?

Maggie Thatcher had assertive skills.

She was not afraid to get up there and say what she thought

and I knew I needed to do that.

If I was going to run my own business, I needed those skills.

I can remember the Chamber of Commerce meeting, the very first one

I went to and, you know, there were just two women in there,

another one came later so that made four of us

and about 80 men. It was quite daunting.

Well, if I just sort of briefly explain to you...

In the '80s, women were starting to get jobs undreamt of

by their mothers' generation.

Everything from selling computers to director of a training company.

Erm, you could have answered the telephone,

"Good morning or good afternoon", instead of "Hello".

They were exciting times for women with ambition.

Absolutely.

In 1984, Sarla Langdon and her husband, Keith,

took on running a free advertising newspaper in Swansea.

She used her skill as a writer to attract new customers -

small companies who needed to advertise their businesses.

What I'd do is,

I'd go to do the story on them.

The advertising people would have sold the advertising and then

I'd say we'll give them editorial, because we need to help these guys.

These are the guys who are our tomorrow,

so, cos I took an interest in them and wrote a story about them,

the bond was created straight away.

I did something nice for them.

Sarla Langdon saw an opportunity to advance her career

as a marketing advisor and help local businesses at the same time.

I got to know what department

of the Welsh government could help them

and I started making the links between the funders

and advisors and businesses.

I started introducing them, so I was making sure

they got to the right people.

Some of the businesses Sarla helped were run by women.

She understood the pressures they were under, especially the mothers.

If you could get back to me on that one.

MUSIC: Breakout by Swing Out Sister

# When explanations make no sense

# When every answer's wrong... #

We were taught, with all these pressures of domestic life,

having to do everything yourself, look after children yourself,

create a home and a household yourself,

how do you have the time or the ability or the inclination

to also start business?

Hats off.

These are some of the most courageous women you will ever meet.

# The time has come to make or break

# Move on, don't hesitate

# Breakout

# Don't stop to ask... #

But, at the beginning of the '80s, many Welsh women

were still full-time housewives, with children to look after,

especially in the mining communities of the Valleys,

where few jobs were available to women.

CHILDREN PLAY

Sian James married her coal miner husband, Martin, when she was 16.

We grew up in a community

where there was a very traditional role for women.

My biggest challenge of the day was my brass, the cleanest brass.

Were my nets white and straight and ironed?

And were the children going to school dressed immaculately?

It was how other women judged you.

Those were the things that the other women

in your community judged you on.

There was some women in the Valleys, though,

with other worries on their mind.

By 1980, the Cold War had reached a critical point.

NATO was fast developing a response to Soviet deployment

of new nuclear missiles aimed at Europe.

In June 1980, the government announced

that 100 American cruise missiles carrying nuclear warheads

were to be based at RAF Greenham Common.

CND activists were outraged and took to the streets.

Sue Lamb was a member of Rhonda CND.

I couldn't lie to my children about something as fundamental as that,

because I knew we were being threatened.

That, if cruise missiles came into this country,

then we were being put at increased risk.

The women of Porth CND decided to stage a week-long demonstration

in their own community.

Sue Lamb and her three sisters were at the centre of events.

We wanted to set up a camp in our own town,

to advertise to the people locally,

to bypass the newspapers, to bypass the television

and just get straight to the people.

So we went down and chained ourselves up,

and it was amazing

the amount of people that encouraged us and supported us.

The women's peace camp at Greenham Common was started in 1981

by a Welsh group who had walked from Cardiff -

Women for Life on Earth.

The aim was to stop the deployment of cruise missiles there.

MUSIC: Over and Over Again

# For the peace that they seek

# Over and over again. #

A year later, Sue and 13 other women at the camp

decided to take their direct action a stage further.

On the night of 27th August,

they cut through the perimeter fence and occupied a sentry box.

It was going in and occupying that sentry box.

That was the big step, because you knew, when you were doing that,

that we were really putting everything on the line.

The group of women were arrested and later jailed for two weeks,

but, for them, it was worth it.

We opened up people's consciousness.

We created a mass movement.

I mean, we became part of what was a burgeoning movement,

but we accelerated that.

When we went to prison, we actually went to prison in November 1982.

Now, one of the most famous episodes in the history of Greenham

is the embrace the base.

That was the key kick publicity that motivated people.

On 12th December, 30,000 women came to Greenham Common

in response to a chain letter, calling on them to embrace the base.

They linked arms as they surrounded the entire nine miles

of perimeter fence.

When the women held hands, we really felt, you know,

that the power of that could bring down that fence.

Being a part of it, I actually felt as if, you know,

it's like Jericho - bring down the walls.

Despite the women's protest,

cruise missiles were sited at Greenham Common,

but were removed several years later,

when the Cold War ended.

THEY SHOUT

Just as Greenham politicised the many women involved,

so too did the miners' strike of 1984.

SHOUTING

You make sure you get that on the news tonight!

With no wages coming in, families of striking miners

found themselves on the breadline, struggling to survive.

Instinctively, wives, mothers and daughters came together

to form support groups.

For that year, we were truly a community that was working

outside of the norms of society.

We created our own alternative welfare state.

4, 6, 8...

But there should be 7 or 8.

I can't see for looking.

Yeah, I'm just saying, if they get a lump sum,

they don't get social security, you can't spend it on luxuries...

Often, discussions turned into debates about politics and feminism.

For many women from the Valleys,

this was a life-changing experience, made even more so

when they travelled to other parts of Britain to promote the strike.

THEY SING

'You could see our awareness as women and about our own rights.'

They were growing and by now we were meeting women from Greenham Common.

We were meeting feminists from other, you know...

lesbian and gay women.

We were meeting people who were active

within different trade unions, so we were being exposed to lots of

different feminist ideas.

All of this was happening, you know.

There were all these different strands of our lives changing.

So you were a mother, you were a wife,

you were a political activist,

you were a fundraiser,

you were a debater.

And we had this one massive thing in common -

we all hated Margaret Thatcher.

We detested her with a passion.

# And you'll never

# Walk alone

# You'll never

# Walk alone. #

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

The strike turned out to be a long test of endurance

for the mining communities.

By early 1985, it was clear that the strike was coming to an end

and the miners would not be the victors.

Those in debt were desperate to get back to work and normality,

but there were some women in the Valleys with mixed feelings.

For Sian James, there was no going back to being a housewife.

I was afraid that I would be pushed back into that ordinary life

that I had been quite happy with,

but I knew I could never be happy with in the future.

I was really afraid about that.

I'd been exposed to all these new ideas, new friends, new experiences

and I just couldn't, at that point, see how I could continue it.

I changed as a person, you know?

I knew that there were different things that I could do,

that I had skills that could be useful,

or that my opinion was just as important

as other people's opinions.

Many of the younger generation of mothers across Wales

were rejecting the male dominance of family life.

The opportunities they saw were very different to the traditional role

of mam with children and a working husband to support.

Some even saw marriage itself as an obstacle to their ambitions.

In the early '80s, Michele Ryan was a budding film-maker in Cardiff.

I was a single parent.

It was me and my son

and I was just starting to embrace working in the media,

because I'd been an independent film-maker

and, as a woman, I had seen the impact of not having much power

amongst my parent's generation.

I was a single parent, because I didn't want to get married.

So, for me, I felt like I had a degree of freedom

and responsibility and control over my life...

..which meant that I could...

I could do things in the way I wanted to.

In 1985, Michele Ryan was working

with the women's film group in Pontypridd.

They called themselves Red Flannel and named their first film Mam.

It was a history of women in Wales.

There's hardly ever any history of women on screen.

Women had contributed to the Valleys, to the history of Wales

and where did you find it?

We could hardly find anything when we decided to do Mam.

We had to make it ourselves.

We had to put those women on screen, because nobody had talked to them.

It was all female crew.

This was a film made by women, about women.

We spent nearly a year recording women's voices

from the Valleys, from the mining valleys.

In the first instance, when we went, they would sort of say,

"Oh, no. You need to interview my dad, or my husband, or my brother."

You know? "Cos I just...

"Well, I'm just a housewife".

And, of course, they had amazing stories to tell.

Mam also included women's stories in the 1980s.

We've got a community centre now, which we never had before,

you know, somewhere actually to meet.

Women seem to get more isolated than men,

because men tend to call in the club,

but a lot of women don't. They've got the children, their young.

You know, they just don't go anywhere.

Some of the women that appeared in Mam,

a couple of them lived on this particular estate

and they had never gone into the college,

which was literally 100 yards away from where they lived.

They'd never gone through the door. It was just too terrifying for them.

By the end, not only had they gone into the college,

but they'd started a tenants association,

so a lot of them found confidence and employment

through the work that we did.

Employment for women soared in the '80s,

but, despite a few innovative schemes,

childcare provision remained a major problem

with those with a family.

Many young mothers wanted work with part-time hours.

It was an issue women in business understood well.

Marianne Pettifore and her friends

started a recruitment agency in Swansea.

My partner and I, Anne,

we started a healthcare recruitment company

and one of the challenges at the time was

a lot of women had children and, therefore,

could only work certain times.

And everybody was different, like their husband would come home

at five o'clock and they might be able to leave at half past five.

So we set up a database with all these little quirky arrangements,

like "only do a Friday afternoon, or I can work only weekends,

"I can work nights, I can do two hours".

And we were able to accommodate that.

They were mainly women, because it was the caring profession

and it was a wonderful feeling to be able to give them work

week after week.

And, as we got busier and took on contracts,

some of them were in permanent positions and freer contracts

and that gave Anne and I a lot of pleasure, you know?

We felt that was very rewarding in itself.

MUSIC: Find the Time by Five Star

-# So find the time

-Find the time...

-#

In their increasingly hectic lives,

women were not only finding time for work.

With money in their pockets,

they wanted to enjoy a night out with the girls.

This was in marked contrast to their mothers' generation.

My generation had seen our mams

tied to the kitchen sink.

Erm...

my mother would only go out once a week, shopping.

My mother never went anywhere with my father socially at all.

Many women didn't.

Women now could come into a pub unaccompanied.

They could come in on their own and nobody would look at them.

And now you had women going on girls nights out.

MUSIC: Greased Lightnin'

But, like many women, Joy found going out with her friends

caused friction with her husband.

I no longer felt now that I had to seek permission for this

or seek permission for that

and, now and again, perhaps he would say,

"You're going out with the girls? Oh, really?"

And it didn't always sit very easily.

You see, a lot of men looked at the way their mums and dads were

and you'd get, "My mother would never do that".

Well, his mother never had the opportunity to do it.

My mother wouldn't have done that.

My mother was always there for my father.

"My mother did this. My mother did that".

Well, those days were long gone.

You didn't wear the crossover pinny

and Donkey the doorstep anymore.

There were far more exciting things to do.

# ..and never brought to mind

# Should auld acquaintance be forgot

# In days... #

As women strived to better their lives,

there could be consequences for their marriages.

In the '80s, divorce in Wales was on the increase,

often an outcome of women's' desire for greater independence.

MUSIC: Into the Groove by Madonna

Marianne Pettifore's ambition to expand her business

broke up her marriage.

I changed and, unfortunately, that had a price.

You're not quite the person you were before.

The other thing that was a problem for me was

coming home maybe with...

having a lift with several men, businessmen,

from a network, who'd say, "I'll drop you off".

Well, this caused trouble with the partner, my husband.

You know, it's very difficult to work in a one-gender vacuum.

You can't just work with women,

you are going to come into contact with men.

And, very often, some of these events were quite late

in the evening, but I had to have a presence there.

So, once you start being in all these business networks,

I'm afraid the home life took a toll

and, eventually, my marriage ended.

And it ended because the woman he married

had changed, unfortunately.

A dedication to her work could affect a woman's life in other ways.

Late childbirth became increasingly common for women

caught up in the pursuit of their career.

In the late '80s Bonnie Tyler, then 39,

and her manager husband Robert,

were drawing breath after her seventh album

was not the success they hoped for.

At that time, it was a quiet-ish time for me

and so...

We'd always put off having children,

because it was all so busy, busy, busy.

And it just felt the right time for us, you know?

And so we started to try for a baby then, you know?

We stopped all precautions and...

and I caught almost straight away.

It was unbelievable.

And I was pregnant for only, like,

three months or something.

And, unfortunately, it wasn't to be.

Bonnie lost her baby and never conceived again,

but her faith helped her cope with this personal tragedy.

It's like God telling me,

"Yes, you can have children, but it's not for you."

You know? And, believe it or not, it helped me immensely.

In the '80s, men were becoming more sensitive

to the needs and aspirations of their wives.

After Sian James managed to get a place at Swansea University

as a mature student to read for a degree in Welsh,

her husband, Martin, came up with a solution

for the care of their children, even though he still worked as a miner.

This meant that Martin had to basically do three years of nights,

while I was in university.

Really, the strike, you know, supporting him doing the strike,

we did that as a family together.

We sat down and we said,

"Right, we're in this together, as a family", from day one,

and I think we saw university as an investment in our future.

We saw getting a degree and getting a good job at the end of it

as a positive thing for our family.

After graduating, Sian James became involved

in women's rights campaigns

and later was elected Labour MP for Swansea East.

By the end of the decade, women across Wales,

whatever their background, were reaping the benefits

of a newfound independence.

Women were saying,

"We're going out to work, we're going to earn the money

"and we're going to have a say in what we do with our lives.

"And we just want to be equal to men."

If success, for you, is bringing up your family,

then that's success.

If it's one day a week in a shop, that's success.

If it's running a huge company, then that's success.

But we're not all about chasing that corporate dream, you know?

Women had changed.

The women were getting more confident,

the women wanted more of a stake.

And, as much as I hated Margaret Thatcher as a political figure,

you had to say, look, she was leading a bunch of men,

why not me?

We can all do it.

The '80s gave me

a sense of who I was.

It empowered me.

It enabled me and it gave me the courage

to act on my convictions.

That's what the '80s did for me.

And it changed my life, as a result.

MUSIC: The Power by Snap!

The new woman had come of age

and she was not going back.

# I've got the power! #

Next time, we look at extreme personal challenges

in a decade defined by conflict and celebrity.

# Power! #

# I've got the power! #