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...

@brokentoy I had my own bank account in 1974 without need for it to have a male reference. But, when I got married in 77 I was no longer able to talk about my tax to the revenue. on saying 'I do' all my income magically became my husband's property.

My Granny was a WW2 widow and had to go back to work ( shock horror!) to support her family. I presume she must’ve had a bank account and she was able to purchase a house in 1960 after saving for years.

Re. Drinking. She worked for a large company and was often taken out for business lunches. Unusually, the firm encouraged her to negotiate on their behalf, because despite being a petite 5’2”, she apparently could drink people under the table…so she’d let the men have a few drinks and then negotiate a good deal. 🤣

My mum started a business in 1984 and needed a business account. The bank she had a joint account with my dad with refused to give her the account, as did many other banks. Purely on the basis that she was a woman. Can’t recall which bank gave her an account in the end - for a business she ran for over 30 years.

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.

Not sure you're right about that, as a general rule. I was born in 1961. Just before I turned 5 in Jan 66, my DB (who'd have been in what we call yr 5 at the time) mentioned at school that his mum had been a teacher. There must have been a shortage at the time... he was sent home at lunchtime to ask DM to come into the school asap. (We had no phone). Well, obviously she wondered what the heck he'd done but it turned out they wanted her to come and teach, and they were willing to admit me to reception immediately after the Xmas hols (I wasn't due to start until the Easter intake).
Most of the other teachers were married women with kids - I'm not sure all of them were older than me.

@EducatingArti Ah, perhaps it was the lack of maternity leave that encouraged female teachers to resign during pregnancy then, rather than it being an actual requirement.

Perhaps if you had someone to provide childcare, you could go back fairly soon. My Mum isn’t with us anymore so I can’t ask her.

My mother worked hard and flew up the ladder at work until she fell pregnant with me
she worked until 8 months pregnant then had to quit-no mat leave for her
shed been married for 7 years and she said it was unusual for women not to quit when they did marry
this was 1978
she couldn’t have her own bank account,couldn’t go to the bar in a pub or claim the child benefit in her own name-dads name had to go on the books too
when they got married in 1971 they bought a lot on hp-only my dad could sign the forms
when they bought a house in 1980 she couldn’t sign for the house unless dad was there
and oddly,even though I’ve seen him use the phone about 5 times since they got a landline,it’s in my dads name-he said something about BT only allowing him to sign up for having one-but he could have been confused about that

i remember a male friend being shocked that I’d stopped off at the pub one day and ordered myself a glass of wine,sat by myself in the beer garden and drank it
this was about 2009 and he thought it was odd and not ‘the done thing’

Early 70s policewomen had to finish work when they were 3 months pregnant. Police clerical assistants could stay on until they were 6 months pregnant.

In the 1970s a female teacher could be married but once you had a child you had to leave.

My mother must have missed that memo.

I know a great great aunt was bought a shop by her father as she was unmarried. She married at 34 after WWII but her father had died 7 years earlier. No clue what would have happened with any bank account/business dealings back then. Was a single woman independent on her father's death or did it pass to another male relative?

”women lived with family until they were married”- where on earth do you get that form?
a massive massive number of women were servants living away from home from age 14, my own grandmothers included. Even middle class women were sent away to work as governesses, companions, tutors etc.
as families were large in those days space at home was at a premium and by 14-16 families needed these girls income,
but aside from that you’re right - people dealt in cash, especially women and the working classes.

and the marital rape is indeed a mark of how far we’ve come. This was after I was married. It is less than 10 years ago (2015) that emotional abuse and coercive control became illegal. When I was in my marriage and this was going on in 1990s I did not divorce or leave as these terms weren’t widely known and not grounds for divorce in a language that I could explain.

Remember pay was in cash, people tended to have a building society or post office account for savings

I think it was 1975 when women got the right to return to work after maternity leave.

workingfamilies.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Timeline-of-Workers-Rights.pdf

I believe my mother's wages went directly to her uncle (her legal guardian) when she got a job. This would have been post war, so around 1948 or 1949. She got a small allowance.

She married my DF in the 50's, but as he was a French citizen he could not legally own a property in Jersey, and nor could she because she was female. So it was either France or Canada - they chose Canada.

In 1990 DH changed jobs, new job was starting to do bacs. We went into a bank to open an account, they asked how much monthly would be going in he told them, they laughed, yes, laughed and refused. We had to traipse round to find one that would let him have an account.

YY to women only having financial independence relatively recently and for poorer sections of society financial services were also very restricted.

My mother married in 1959. She had a job as a research assistant at a well known school of medicine in london . She was told she could not keep her job after she married. She loved that job.

without contraception ( pill not available to married women until 1961 , but she didn’t get on with it as early versions not great, they were advised the abstinence method as she told me, so assume my father had an issue with condoms😠) she had 3 children under 4 within 4 years of her wedding night. She developed post partum psychosis as a result of very traumatic, and downright neglectful births resulting in 4th degree tears (she’d probably be diagnosed with PTSD these days but in those days only male hero soldiers could get that back then). Somehow she “managed” to get pregnant again while being treated with things like Valium and electro convulsive therapy . Her mental health hospital arranged a “D&C” because in those days it would have been illegal to give her an abortion, even though her life would potentially have been at risk from her mental illness . It was another 3 years before abortion was legalised. My father never knew she had an abortion. She never dared tell him.

all credit to her that in early 1970s , when she had 3 young children, she did a part time BEd and eventually got a teaching post in mid 1970s. I don’t know how she managed doing a degree and raising 3 kids and recovering from PTSD and ongoing gynae issues that plagued her all her life. Sadly she died before she reached 60- I appreciate what she achieved with so much against her more with each passing year.

I imagine many of our mothers and grandmothers went through that. We all have a duty to tell these stories, like we do with the suffering caused by war on remembrance day, to ensure the younger generation know our rights need to be fought for continually or they will be stripped away. There is a reason women don’t have a remembrance day for women lost to childbirth or left disabled form childbirth - and that has a lot to do with a patriarchal society diminishing women roles

as someone mentioned upthread, the majority of the population didn’t have a bank account until the 1960s-1970s. There was a very interesting series on this on R4 last year.

It was 1982 when women were allowed to go to the bar to buy their own drinks. Before then they had to sit at a table and wait for a male companion to buy drinks for them. The law was challenged (and finally changed in Nov 82) by a female lawyer and a female journalist after they were banned from a pub in Fleet St for refusing to sit and wait for their drinks to be ordered for them.

Even post WW2 into the 50s, women had to leave the civil service when they got married (and got a "special payment" on leaving).

That can’t have been universally the case. Unless, of course, my mother was claiming to go out to work but actually just sloping off to the pub for most of my early childhood…

Yes my DGM had a joint account with my DGF until she could get her own. She couldnt get a loan, even hire purchase.

That’s not true at all. No way did women have to sit at a table and wait for a male to buy them a drink before 1982.

I was a teenager in the 70’s and spent all my leisure time in discos, pubs and clubs that’s what most of my generation did.

Not the same but you also needed your father’s permission to get a passport. If he wasn’t around or he didn’t want you going away that was just tough tit.

My mum worked at a telephone exchange and on marrying my dad in 1973 it was expected she would leave. She didn't, but five years later she had me and yes, she had to leave.

I remember my parents mortgage was only in Dad's name.

My mum was a stay at home parent in the late 70s and early 80s...when I was about 7 she started doing OU courses and came out with a degree in social sciences. She worked from about 1988/9 in offices. Times had changed massively by then. By the time I left school in 1996 it was EXPECTED that I have my own bank account and that I work and manage my own money.

My daughter has had a debit card from the age of 13. She thinks having her own account is totally normal. She has no idea.

Married men were legally responsible for their wife's tax as well as their own until some time in the late 80s or early 90s, I think. Ridiculous state of affairs.

This is so true.

I'm in my 40s and I can remember marital rape finally being outlawed and, more trivially, women lawyers being permitted to wear trousers into court - both in the 1990s.

I can also remember when I was in 6th form a teacher telling us that when she started work in the 60s she was the breadwinner for a while when she got her first job and her husband did extended study. She got a tax rebate by a cheque sent through the post - addressed to her husband who had not earned the money to which the tax related.

It is really recent that women gained so many of the rights they have and they are now being shown to be precarious.