Skip to main content

This Day Tonight: Makeup and manners: Roles for 12-year-old girls

Posted 
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Hand holds cotton pad to face of teenage girl, wipes or applies white cream
This Day Tonight: Makeup and manners: Roles for 12-year-old girls

SUBJECTS:  History

YEARS:  9–10


How have society's expectations of young women changed in since the 1970s?

This report from the ground-breaking current affairs program This Day Tonight provides an indication of the sorts of opportunities available to young women in the 70s.


Things to think about

  1. 1.Who determines your future? Can you attain the education and career of your choice? The 1970s was a time of sweeping social change. Yet it might surprise you to discover that, despite the achievements of the Women's Liberation movement, many young women were not expected to complete school and pursue an independent career.
  2. 2.Why does the teacher think the girls in the clip are old enough to learn to use makeup? At what age does she assume they will leave school? What reasons do those girls who wear makeup give for wearing it? What assumptions about girls and women underpin this course?
  3. 3.The girls in this clip are undertaking a course of ten lessons. This course, as to the reporter says (perhaps tongue-in-cheek), teaches them '… every aspect of what a young woman should know'. What does the course cover? Do you think it addresses everything that a young woman should know? What does the reporter's observation suggest about society's expectations of young women?
  4. 4.The modern women's movement, often called 'feminism' or 'women's liberation', gained momentum in the 1960s. It challenged traditional gender roles that prevented women from enjoying the same social and professional opportunities as men. Prepare a summary of what a feminist response to this report might have looked like if it had been written in the 1970s.



Date of broadcast: 19 Nov 1975


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Posted