WW2 women not allowed to have bank accounts in their own name?

[CheeryTulip]

I just heard this as a side fact in a lecture about something else on Youtube. The speaker said his grandmother wasn't allowed a bank account in her own name -& how times have changed. Is this true? What happened if you were single? I'm now wondering about my own grannies...

What happened with widowed women?
My Grandma was widowed suddenly in the 1950,s she had her own business, she had three children aged 12,8 and 2 and put them all through private school so she must have had a bank account?

I had my first well paid job in 1985, I was paid in cash and didn’t have a bank account. I hadn’t been refused but had no need. Think I got my first about 1987.

This was definitely a thing.

It also wasn’t unheard of for a husband to clear out the joint account - while a woman couldn’t access a lump sum without her husband’s say so.

Even in the noughties, dh and I had an investment planning meeting with the bank and he was discreetly asked if it was ok to show me all of his accounts (there were a few) - ie we’ll help you conceal money from your wife if you give us the nod sir. Some things are slow to change.

My mum talked about not being able to go into the pub as a woman alone until the 1980s.
I remember hearing on the radio that it was now illegal to rape your wife and I’m only 41.
We have had many rights only recently gained, I think many younger women don’t realise the fight that has been fought to get them.

the marriage bar for women was included in nursing, teaching and the civil service - once you got married you had to give up working. I think it ended in the 1960s.

My mum was born in 1941, when she went to university she wanted a bank account and her dad had to go with her to set it up.

It’s less shocking than it seems because it was such a cash based society. You didn’t need a bank account, everyone was paid in cash & spent in cash. Very little in the way of savings, my Nan’s was split between a shoebox and her handbag. Some savings made by handing cash to the Pru man who visited weekly.

Only the very wealthy needed a bank account.

In the 1970s a female teacher could be married but once you had a child you had to leave. My mum left her job in the early 1970s when she was pregnant. She said she had no say in the matter. She was teaching again by the time I was about 5yo so not sure if things changed or if it was deemed ok once the kids were a certain age.

My mum worked in the kitchens of a boarding school in the 50s, and lived on site. Her wages went into a bank account that her Dad controlled. The bank would not allow her to withdraw her own wages, not without her Dad being there or giving written permission. He was in Birmingham, she was in Bath. Convenient, huh?
I remember the bank in town refusing to give her cash without calling my Dad first, in the 70s.
Women's financial independence is pretty recent.

I think maybe pubs were male dominated environments so possibly women didn't want to go in them alone ,I'm 48 and certainly remember pubs that were very much dominated by males ,but I also remember my .mum taking us to beer Gardens in the late 70,s and 80,s with her and her friends ,and their kids my dad always worked shifts so often wasn't around in the evenings but I do remember sitting in beer gardens with my mum and her friends enjoying a glass or two of cider and us kids having a whale of a time .

At least they were spared the worst of it. Just read a book on the Guinea Pig Club.

I think it must have been I was born in 1973 my friends mum was a reception teacher and she started teaching back at our school once her youngest daughter was school age .

My mum's colleague had HMRC try to handle her taxes via her husband - wrote to him, tried to deal only with him. He wrote back telling them he had nothing to do with her earnings and had no intention of discussing it with them.

This was in 1984 or so.

When my Mum got a mortgage in 1986, as a single woman, there were precisely two building societies willing to lend to her. None of the rest would touch her with a bargepole.

I don't think people have any idea how recent women's financial independence has been.

It was legal to rape your wife - even after separation, and if you'd broken into her new home to do so - until the 1990s.

My mum wasn't allowed.. in 1964.
She 'd just had me but wasn't allowed a bank account as she wasn't earning.

I'm sure a lot of pubs had separate areas for women to go in too.

I know in the early 90s a lot of pubs were trying to be more attractive to women.. They did things like put big windows in at the front so women could see what they were walking into.

Yep, @QuebecBagnet rhe same happened to my Mum, which is why she put off having me until 38! She left when she was five months pregnant as teachers weren’t allowed to “show” at work and as there wasn’t any maternity leave provision, you essentially had to resign to give birth and recover!

Like your Mum, she went back when I was 5 so I presume that was acceptable?!

Pubs had 2 different bars. The Public Bar was a male domain and women were only welcome in the Saloon Bar but females drinking without male company was frowned upon as was ordering a round of drinks at the bar.
My best friend's mum was a single parent in the 60s and was a social outcast.

When my grandfather died in 1961 my gran was forced to leave the pub they ran, they had had it for many years, had bought up a family there etc, she was not allowed to have a drinks license as a woman on her own, in one swoop she lost her husband, her income and her home.

In 1976, after a terrible pregnacy where my mum and my brother nearly died, despite doctors telling my mum another pregnacy would be fatal for her my father still had to sign the consent form for my mother to be sterilised.

You bet I am for looking after womens rights.

pregnancy - ffs!

In Glasgow, in the seventies ,there was a special fund for teachers' wives, in the event of their husband dying suddenly and the husband's bank account being frozen.and the wives being left penniless until probate was finalised.

This isn't true actually. My mum married in 1959 and continued to teach full time until she had me in the 1960's. She went back to work when I was 2 and then had another 2 years off when she had my sister. She worked all through the 1970s. Part time at first and then full time from 1975.

This was quite a good thread last year

www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_classics/4242000-To-want-to-settle-a-generation-gap-argument-older-female-relative-is-saying-women-had-to-give-up-work-when-they-got-married

My employers still assumed that all female employees autumatically resigned on marriage and I had to sign a document confirming that I wasn't leaving.

That was in 1983.

Oh for an edit button - 'automatically' obviously.