came before Parliament, Thatcher slapped a one-line whip on all Tory MPs to vote for it. Even though some rebelled, it is clear that the Tory government saw the Bill as in line with their general strategy. By attempting to reduce abortions by up to 80,000 a year, the Bill was aimed at whipping up a climate to ease women out of the workforce and back into the home • where they "belong' - bearing id rearing children.
A: a time of rapidly rising unem= ament, Corrie's Bill thus had a natural attraction for the Tory e: ters. Removing women from the workforce could be justified *theoric about defending the meet the "unborn child'.
DEFENSIVE This stamp to push women ::: ire workiorce has not been imited however, to the happily key aspect of all Thatcher's policies. As the cut-backs in government expenditure bite, whose jobs will be first on the line? Those in which women tend to predominate - teachers, cleaners, social workers, librarians and cooks. Cutting back on womens' jobs will not only lower family income - something the Thatcher government was supposedly so concerned about - but will hit single-parent families particularly hard.
As services are cut back by the local councils, who will increasingly be affected? Women. Day nurseries, on which many working mothers depend, will be the first to be axed as will hospital facilities which will make abortions harder to obtain EMPLOYMENT BILL Latest in line of these attacks instatement to their jobs.
also those who do not find it Bill), but they're also trying to make sure that, when they do their job back!
FAMILY Employment Bill. Among its anti union provisions are some which attempt to strip away the right that presently exists for women to obtain maternity leave and reThe Bill not only exempts firms with five or tewer employees but "reasonably practicable" to make such a provision, and those where the woman is offered an alternative and "unreasonably refuses"
Not only have the Tories tried to force women to have children they don't want under Corrie's have them, they can't legally get As they attempt to push women back into the home through cutbacks in nurseries, redundancies and legal curbs, the Tories will, of course, escalate their talk about "te-affirming' the values of family life. In the pre-election build-up, both Thatcher and Callaghan put great store on preserving the 'tradThe family life the Tories want to preserve?
itions' of the family.
But the family life the Tories want to preserve is one in which women are reduced to the status of man-server and baby-minder, without any rights of their own
April 80