Boys’ vulnerabilities weren’t being either acknowledged or addressed. Shamefully, boys’ education was not being creatively revamped. There was an emphasis on girls’ education and “empowerment”. Women, meanwhile, seemed to be advancing. Voids opened for many men without much explanation: long-term unemployment and the pressures of “social mobility” produced much pain and dislocation. There were neither the words nor emotional concepts to do so and the world was moving too fast. It was an interesting time where, for some, these vast social changes could be addressed. Households increasingly needed both adults in paid work to get by. The issue of emotional exchange, in which women gravitated to looking after men’s vulnerability – often before the men themselves had acknowledged it – and men provided protection to women, wobbled.

Men’s place, women’s place, parenting and the ideas of masculinity and femininity were being shaken up. This removed many men’s skilled occupations, while elevating the prestige afforded to money-making. Women’s work, inside and outside the home, was being quasi-valued as Thatcher and future governments deindustrialised the UK. The changing economic climate produced clashes at another level. Where had that come from? Was it accurate? If so, why? Did it come from unmet needs in their relationship? Had women foisted on to men longings that their men didn’t see or know how to respond to? The charge of neediness and clinginess, which had been hung on women, required understanding.

Women then began to look more directly at their own vulnerabilities and their desires in heterosexual (and same-sex) relationships. The old “protector” bargain wasn’t holding up, as men failed to see women’s longings. Other women grew resentful or fatigued by the lack of emotional reciprocity or recognition in this arrangement, and pulled back from giving.

They went on strike to show what was missing. Sometimes, women purposefully withdrew this kind of caring. One of many consequences has been a questioning of the emotional labour that women have provided for men – often when the men haven’t realised they needed or were receiving it. Over a 50-year period, girls and women all over the world have been endeavouring to reshape their lives. The 1970s saw the beginnings of enormous changes between women and men, which led to today’s expanding notions of gender.

The will to change men masculinity