To want to settle a generation gap argument: older (female) relative is saying women had to give up work when they got married?

[Winnabella]

Got an older female relative (aunt) who gave up work when she married my uncle (now passed away). They got married in 1964. My parents got married in 1970 and my mum carried on working. My grandmother carried on working until she was in her late 70s. But my aunt goes on about how it 'wasn't acceptable' to carry on working after getting married. She's not done too badly being a SAHM but does go on a bit about the sacrifices she made. She had a cleaner and a housekeeper to do the housework and she and my uncle had 2 children. My cousins often joke about how they had to wear their pyjamas for two weeks. My aunt came round on Sunday and she went on and on about the job she did just before she got married. It is a bit like she's been stuck in time - this was nearly 50 years ago now. Was it the case that women were frowned upon in the 1960s for working if they got married; and how come my mother and grandmother seemed to hold down jobs (my mum part time after I was born and before I started school)

I don't know the time frame but teachers and nurses had to leave the profession when they married.

If my Mum was still living she would be 93 by now. She had to give up work when she got married. Most women did anyway as no childcare.

My mum got married to my dad in 1968. She was 19 years old. He handed her notice in to her employer - and they accepted it!!! She had me at 20. They divorced 10 years later.

Watch Back In Time For The Factory on BBC2, I think the "tea boy" was paid more than the skilled female machinists that had to give up work when they got married.

Absolutely was the case yes.

Where did they/you live in England? I grew up in the 1980s in a very working-class Northern town, and none of the mothers of the kids at my school worked until well into the 90s. The north was about twenty years behind - most of my childhood was to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from my mother's in the 1960s.

I'm sorry but I don't believe that for a second, @irresistibleoverwhelm
Between the mid 70s and the end of the 80s I lived in both the north and the South East. My in laws lived in a pit village in a poor area of Yorkshire, and it's laughable to even imagine a school there where no mothers worked. My MIL was a nurse and she and my miner FIL worked jigsaw shifts. Most of the female neighbours worked too.
As for there being twenty years difference between North and South...well thanks for contributing to the north south divide. Yes there are cultural differences, but you know that employment law is and was national, right? Totally ridiculous to claim 20 years difference in either culture or employment. I lived both lives in the time scale you described, and you're entirely wrong.

Being expected to give up work upon marriage is very class related. There are no stay at home mothers in my very working class family tree.

I think from reading the thread it’s quite clear that women were mostly expected to leave stable, secure, “good” jobs.

Obviously many women were still cleaners, and at home seamstresses, shop work and the likes - jobs with little security, low pay and “pin” money were still very common.

It says a lot to attitudes. Their wage was still needed in so many households yet their opportunities to earn it were stifled so much.

@Georgyporky if you worked for an employer that was enlightened and kind enough to do this in the Uk in 1967 you were VERY lucky because it wasn't enshrined in law at that time

Cant speak to council nurseries though.

@DentonsFringeArnottsWaistcoat women are STILL losing their jobs due to pregnancy just the employers are sneakier about it now I've had 2 friends have that happen, seen several threads on here by ops in that position too

Life was made very difficult for me from then on

I can imagine! Sadly still goes on in many places.

To all those saying "she could have re-entered the workforce" I'd be VERY interested to know if any of you have ever been out of work for an extended period of time? More than 5 years? And how old you are now? And when were you last job hunting even in current times? Because I can assure you both from personal experience and from learning about how difficult this is for others it is NOT that simple. Employers are very reluctant to employ people who've been long term unemployed - for whatever reason - but they're especially reluctant to do so when it's women's and especially older women. And these women you are DISMISSING and CRITICISING had it a damn sight harder than you do!

I've been a single mum since 2004, when trying to get work through agencies they've not put me forward for vacancies with certain companies based on their knowing those clients were prejudiced against women/mothers/single mothers - this was up to the 2010's

@SavannahLands I've mentioned on here before - and been told I'm wrong! That there is STILL stigma to being an "unmarried mother" I was married to dds father and stayed a "Mrs" and kept my married name which was the same as dds because frankly I was aware of this and had enough shit going on I didn't need to ALSO fight that battle. My sister hasn't been married to her kids dads (3 by 2 dads, both long term relationships, dads reluctant to marry) and I have seen the crap she's had as a result - from teachers, council workers, medical staff, even bus drivers! It's shit and shouldn't happen but I will always say to anyone who claims it's no longer the case that it's bullshit it most definitely is.

I'm an ex hcp myself but there's still a LOT of sexism in medical care - but that's another thread really.

Any pps who are interested might like to look at the ongoing issues within Asda pay policies (and I'm
not singling them out for any other reason than their employees recently won a major court case on the matter - though I believe Asda may be appealing, plus other Asda employees are still figuring out if it affects them)

It is very much still a current issue (sexism in the workplace)

Re Catholicism and trousers there are I recall a few bible passages on the matter Deuteronomy 22:5 springs to mind

A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whosoever doeth these things is an abomination

Old Testament too so perhaps also in the Torah?

@EL8888 late 70's means after 1975 when the law changed so that doesn't mean that before 1975 things weren't very different, plus "civil service" covers a HUGE amount of people and jobs, different depts have always done things differently, one side of my family are almost all military the other civil service - but a wide range of very different depts with different attitudes and practices even now

There weren’t before/after school clubs in our areas- a very new concept.
Yes that's a really recent thing to my mind, possibly starting late 90's but not normal and widespread until late 2000's, I had a hell of a time finding one for dd.

in roles that have always been poorly paid in comparison to men’s job

There's apparently some evidence that careers that WERE male dominated and are NOW more female dominated have dropped in pay levels And vice versa too.

I'm also shocked when I come across people - especially girls/women who don't know this stuff and how recent it was.

I'm so grateful to the women that came before and after who have and continue to fight for improved equality and better rights for girls and women. I have done what I can when I can but wish I could/had done more.

One thing I remember from the 70s in the Midlands was that there was practically no professional childcare. If you didn't have family or friends who could take your small kids and you needed to work you either worked opposite shifts with your husband, worked from home or only worked school hours.

@saraclara

Where did they/you live in England? I grew up in the 1980s in a very working-class Northern town, and none of the mothers of the kids at my school worked until well into the 90s. The north was about twenty years behind - most of my childhood was to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from my mother's in the 1960s.

I'm sorry but I don't believe that for a second, @irresistibleoverwhelm
Between the mid 70s and the end of the 80s I lived in both the north and the South East. My in laws lived in a pit village in a poor area of Yorkshire, and it's laughable to even imagine a school there where no mothers worked. My MIL was a nurse and she and my miner FIL worked jigsaw shifts. Most of the female neighbours worked too.
As for there being twenty years difference between North and South...well thanks for contributing to the north south divide. Yes there are cultural differences, but you know that employment law is and was national, right? Totally ridiculous to claim 20 years difference in either culture or employment. I lived both lives in the time scale you described, and you're entirely wrong.

I can assure you that life in a suburb of a small northern town in the 80s was exactly like that! (North west not north east - no pit villages where I grew up.) Most families at my primary school lived in small 2/3 bed sixties semis, mum didn’t work, lower middle and working class, church on Sundays, got the local bus everywhere, hymns at primary school, brownies and cubs, very homogenous and white, old fashioned, very dull. My childhood in terms of school life, home life, no real technology etc. was pretty much the same as my parents’. It was only in the end of the 80s and early 90s that that started to change and become a bit more socially modern and diverse. Sorry that the north isn’t the same everywhere throughout! Pretty off to be telling me I’m lying though.

It’s true. Happened to my MIL. I feel a bit sad that some people don’t believe what these older women are saying.

OP, I do feel for your aunt as I've met many women over the years who were forced to give up good jobs they enjoyed, and rightfully resented it. They were still wondering what might have been, and one of them told me frankly that if she could have her time over she would have stayed single and pursued her career.

Even women who didn't face an official Marriage Bar found it very difficult to combine work and motherhood. My DM (born 1929, married 1960) almost went nuts during the four years she had to stay home with two little kids, no money, no help, no social life and never-ending drudgery. I would, too.

yes and it was drudgery too.
remember, there were very few domestic appliances, and women were expected to do all the housework and all the childcare, whether they had an outside job or not.
few houses had a fridge before the 70s, ditto an automatic washing machine, freezers were rare, microwaves yet to be on the market, etc.
lots of things that people take for granted now, were not in most homes.
and coal fires to be made up every day, tended with drawing in heavy scuttles of coal from the backyard, then raking out every morning, taking out the ashes, and start again.
freezing cold houses, fire in only one room. try to dry damp nappies.
and the heavy big metal dustbins with lid, which had to be carried out through the house if there was no side access, terraced houses etc.

[quote SuperMonkeys]en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_bar[/quote]
Interesting, it says that in the Netherlands the marriage bar was removed in 1957. We're Dutch, mum married in 1973 and was made to leave her job. So it seems that the practice went on longer than that (illegally).

@wombatspoopcubes It definitely took longer for that attitudes to change.

This article about women in the NHS says the marriage bar was lifted in 1944 but that societal attitudes took much longer to change. One of the stories included is a woman who had to resign from nursing in 1948 after marrying (she went back years later after a shortage of nurses saw things relax)

www.nhs70.org.uk/story/women-work-and-nhs-balance-better

My grandmother was forced out of her civil service job when she married during the 1930s but went back to work - different employer, but an admin job- during the war and then carried on working after the war until retirement although she had to move to a downgraded job when the men came back from the war. My mother kept on working in academia when she married in mid 60s but had to give up work when she had children. She wasn’t forced to but maternity leave was about 3 months and there was little childcare. I’ve seen the letter from her employer on her resignation where he clearly can’t bring himself to actually use a word as indelicate as ‘pregnancy’.

Yes there are cultural differences, but you know that employment law is and was national, right?

What employment law was there which protected women's right to work regardless of marital status?

There was nothing before 1975, and even after that employers still got away with 'business as usual'. The European Court of Human Rights regularly and frequently grapples with sex discrimination cases related to women's employment, in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

I've always found it amusing that the DoS is praised as a "feminist" because she made a public objection to women's doing dishes in some advertisement. It's incredible how young women today have no idea of the hurdles placed before their predecessors to prevent them having even basic rights and opportunities. My generation of girls born in the late 40s-early 50s were the ones who faced the enormous social changes following the war, the development of the Pill, and the clinging of men onto the last vestiges of male privilege. Sexual harassment and bullying were commonplace at university, and on several occasions I was assaulted by lecturers, once during a French Oral exam, with the veiled threat that I would fail unless I allowed the wandering hands. No married woman was allowed on the post-grad teaching training programme, and if a woman wanted to marry during the course, she had to request the Principal's permission. A teacher who was supporting a family could apply for the Married Teachers' Allowance, so in 1977, on the birth of my first DC, I returned to work, leaving my ex-H as a househusband (VERY revolutionary for the time!). I applied for the MTA, but was told that it was only for men supporting a family. I was not eligible, despite being the breadwinner. We had built a house, and only the ex's income was counted for the mortgage, despite my earning 2x as much as him at that time. While I was the sole breadwinner, I tried to buy carpets for the house on HP, but was told that I couldn't unless my husband signed as guarantor...This is the sort of thing we were up against back then.

Never heard of that. I didn't know any women who were stay at home mums when I was growing up (80s). Everyone's mum worked. My grandma (born in 1920s) worked until retirement as a pharmacist.

My mother was in the armed forces in the 1970s. Whilst it wasn't strict policy it was pretty much expected you were discharged once you got married

I was refused a credit card from my bank without my husband’s signature in 1984.

That’s very odd. I got a credit card no problem at all in 1983. Just filled in the form - no involvement from my husband at all.

There weren’t before/after school clubs in our areas- a very new concept.
Yes that's a really recent thing to my mind, possibly starting late 90's but not normal and widespread until late 2000's, I had a hell of a time finding one for dd.

These started to appear in the mid 90s, there was one started in our town just before DS started school, so about 1995, then we were very lucky as someone set one up just as DS started which was actually at the school, I think this was 1997 so only two that I knew of, the one at school and the one at someones house. Before that DS went to a workplace nursery which set up in about 1990, we were very lucky with that as it was subsidised and very convenient.

My mum married in 1967 and carried on working for the BBC until I was born in 1970. By then things were changing and employment tended to carry on til you had your first child- which was shortly after you married.

Indeed so, and girls who stayed on into the sixth form were more likely to go to a Teacher Training College for which you only needed 5 O levels, rather than go to University. When I left school in 1969 some Colleges of Education were just introducing B Eds, for which you did need A levels. Non graduate teachers were paid less, I recall, so since they were more likely to be women, this was another piece of discrimination.

Not necessarily; it much the same for boys; college of education was something you could go to if you didn’t get high enough A level grades for university. And yes, graduate teachers were much better paid. I don’t know if take up of the BEd was higher among male students; quite possibly!