Olympics 1912
Mother and Children 1912
Family 1912
Fashion 1912
Shop assistants 1912
Fashion Teenager 1912
Cars 1912
The greatest moment
Birth 
Bathing Costume 2012
Cars and promotion 2012
Fashion 2012
Teenage Fashion 2012
Fashion 2012
Pregnancy It got me thinking about the difference in teenage girls between now and a hundred years ago could it help us understand the future by looking into the past? Anyway this is what I wrote.
Another way to look at the future. Another
way to look at the future is paradoxically to go back into the past. For in so
doing you capture the great gift of prescience, for the past often reflects the
future or gives one an understanding.
For the purposes of the exercise let us look at a teenage girl in 1912
and one in 2012. A mere hundred years a blink in the realm of time.
Mobility 1912
The aeroplane was nine years old/ horse and buggy was the go the mass produced car was
over fifteen years away. Travelling is a hazardous affair on unmade roads and
limited public conveyances. As a young woman she is restricted to her suburb, town
or village. Young women are not encouraged to travel around alone.
2012 Cheap world air
travel and relatively cheap motoring gives this teenager the chance to travel
the world and all over her country. Good roads, lighting and public transport
make her independent and well educated in the ways of the world. Social mores
are relaxed on girls travelling around.
FASHION 1912 The
vertical line is pronounced so much so that they sometimes hobble the wearer,
curves are definitely out. Corsets begin
to be replaced by brassieres and other light foundation garments. Dresses
reached to the ground and sleeves were full. Hats are required when leaving the
house but are not as wide as previously. Shoes were modest and covered the
whole foot. Work wear for women was typically full length skirt and tops made
of cotton.
2012
It seems everything is in but especially clothes that show off the body. The
dualism of the nineties has given way to feminism and sexy clothes. Undergarments are
made in an enormous number and patterns of design and function. “Ethnic” fashions
come and go, sunglasses and earrings are numerous and often outrageous. Fashion
changes as fast as the new star or internet/social media celebrity comes along.
Education 1912
The role of wife and mother is the
pattern for women and the education system is designed to promote this. Only
basic education is provided so as to enable the girl to function in her
traditional roles. Women who deviate from this pattern are rare and regarded as
radical. Most girls have left schooling by the time they are fourteen.
2012 The number of women
attending higher education has surpassed the number of males. Women are
starting to dominate by numbers in most of the professions. Most attend to year
twelve and a large number go onto to tertiary education.
Sex 1912 There is no sex education and no
coverage of it in the media. Sex is basically not talked about in polite
circles. Contraception is almost non-existent besides abstinence and backyard
abortions for the under privileged. Anatomy and physiology of reproductive
anatomy are rudimentary and almost non-existent in the general population.
Unwed pregnant mothers are shunned and an embarrassment to the family, they
move away from home often to have them and they are adopted out. Victorian
social mores reign supreme and women of good background are never alone with
non-related men. Homosexuality is regarded as unnatural and is against the law.
2012 Sex education is
common in schools and freely available in all media forms. Sexual anatomy and
physiology is widely discussed and debated at all levels of society. The
government supports unwed mothers and sex is not the preserve of the married.
Most girls by the age of sixteen have had some sexual encounter. Contraception
and reproductive technology is available in many forms. Homosexuality is widely
acknowledged and nearly mainstream, gay does not mean happy anymore.
2012 1.98 children per women of reproductive age.
Life Expectancy 1912 Life Expectancy 44 years
Average Height 1912 1.55m
2012 1.64 m
2012 29 Years
Politics 1912 Politics is a male
preserve although Australia is well on the way to female emancipation. There is a
strong suffragette movement. South Australian women won the right to vote in
1895 and the other states soon followed. The first Australian women to enter
parliament is nine years away. (Edith Cowan West Australia)
2012 Women are represented in all parliaments and
the Australian Prime Minister is a women. (Julia Gillard) However only thirty
percent of parliamentarians in Australia are women despite making up just over
half the population.
Business 1912 Few women are in business they cannot even legally own a
home in their own name. They work in their husbands business if they work at
all.
2012 Only three percent of women are on the board
of the top two hundred companies in Australia, and only on fourteen percent on all boards. Australian woman run many small
businesses and own them and property in their own right.
Where are we off to from here? It is true that women have gained so much in health, education, business , politics... and in some fields have some way to go.
But at what cost?
Only the future will tell...
Where are we off to from here? It is true that women have gained so much in health, education, business , politics... and in some fields have some way to go.
But at what cost?
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