Can I ask a question about women's history.....a bit embarrassed that I don't understand it

[susannahmoodie]

I'm reading a book at the minute set in 1920s....there are a lot of references to women having to give up work when they got married. I know this happened, a lot later than the 20s to I think but I don't really get why- what was the rationale behind the idea that you couldn't be married and work at the same time? Also was it related to social class?

Sorry for being ignorant....

Yes agree Custardo AFAIK in the UK this was a problem for women in "professional" roles specifically where there were rules about it I think + I expect there was discrimination generally as still goes on.

In the US it again was mainly "better" jobs, reading the stuff, I don't think it was women doing paid heavy / unskilled / menial / "suitable" work that got booted out.

Women are always good enough to do low-paid shitwork, that goes without saying. When they're not doing it for free, that is.

lol @ narrow minded spinsters

Obviously the work of women is much improved if they have been familiar with a penis or 2

It was the idea that a married woman didn't need a job, as her husband should be providing for her, and if they employed her, they would be taking away a job from a man, who obviously did need a job in order to provide for his wife. Ridiculous circular logic really.

My grandmother was a teacher pre WW1 and married near the start of it - grandpa was of course in the army. As there was a shortage of teachers with men called up, she asked the school board if she could continue to work, which they agreed to. However, they assumed she wouldn't want paying now she had a husband to provide for her. She told them that with him away risking life and limb she most certainly did expect payment - she won her point.

Of course when the men returned after the war many women were ousted from their jobs at whatever level.

I'm a bit surprised by Tinselaffe's aunt in the 60s - my mother was begged to return to teaching the moment I turned 5 in 1966, and at that point nearly all the teachers in my primary school were married mothers.

Even as recent as 1974 when I was born my mum had to give up work because her employer had a rule that if you left your job for any reason (including maternity) they would never re employ you.

She was a secretary & I was unplanned. Luckily for he she was able to find another job after I was born as my dad was only an apprentice.

It would be nice if one wage was enough to support a family again though wouldn't it? Two people working 2.5 days each for instance.

Employers were much more intrusive in everyone's life, my grandfather worked for a bank that didn't allow men to get married until they earned a certain amount of money!

My Mum's colleagues all stopped work as soon as they got pregnant, I've got colleagues in their late 50s who took several years out for children in the 80s, things changed very quickly though, those a few years younger only took a few months off when they had kids and they are the generation that have started to break through the glass ceiling.

Errol My mum told me this after I made some comment about my aunt. She was part of a secretarial pool in a London firm. I think it probably depends on the type of company/job.

Cheeypi hell yes that would be lovely!

Things are such a grind for so many people aren't they but TBH it's always been that way for the majority I guess. Even when 1 wage did support a family you had men stressed to the max about providing and women popping valium & drinking because of the stresses of their situation.

My grandmother never stopped working. She took in laundry for money. My grandparents were very poor so no other option, particularly during the war. My father and his siblings were working by 14 too. My other grandmother on the other hand never worked, and my mother became a teacher in the late 40s expecting to give up on marriage. In the end she didn't marry till the 70s when no one cared.

my first marriage was in 1986, I worked at an accountants. They employed a few lady bookkeepers in their 60s. One of them asked in all seriousness whether I'd be carrying on working after the wedding! ( I did )

Omnipotent I wish I were so eloquent!

Society is sexist. Less obviously so than it used to be, but women are still expected to know their place. We live in a patriarchal society with so much of our tradition, etiquette and frankly law aimed at preserving that.

My mum left her job (radiographer) when she got married - I guess in about 1970. I do wonder why the hell she even bothered qualifying given she would have only been 22 when she gave up work 'for life'.

A colleague told me that at the end of the 70s/early 80s, he worked in a bank. There were two keys needed to open the safe. The (male) manager had one and, as the only other male employee, he was entrusted with the other. No-one thought this remotely odd. Hilariously my colleague is as gay as Christmas and so would probably have been demoted to 'less trustworthy than a woman' had the manager known.

Perhaps we could invert the traditions of the past and make it socially unacceptable for married men to work? (I'm not suggesting this seriously but pointing out the ludicrous nature of the suggestion upthread).

We could go further back and bar married men from holding property.

Curiously my grandmother (not the same one as above) who did carry on working was the one who was better off. She was a music teacher after marriage and children, but she had nannies and worked for herself and didn't need the money for the household. I agree that it's a nonsense about women not working, because of course working class women often had to work, and the wife of a man in trade would almost certainly have equal amounts of work to do in the family business, but without te recognition of being head of the household or business

My MIL had to leave her job when she married, the marriage bar was still law for the civil service in the country she lived in, and this was in 1974!

unclerory banks have been very intrusive employers until quite recently. When I was working in one in late 1990s/early 2000s some of the intrusions included copies of our bank statements being forwarded to our managers each month, and if they wanted to they were allowed to question you as to how you spent your money. We weren't allowed to get involved in anything outside of work without written permission from management eg joining PTA or doing voluntary work. And perhaps my favourite, we had to have written permission to move house. If your manager thought that the house was unsuitable (eg too long commute, too big a house for your needs) they could, and would, refuse permission.

Getting back to the original point, that same bank were forcing women to resign on marriage right up until around the late 1970s. I knew a lady who is only in her 60s now who was proud to be the first female employee to have been allowed to keep her job.

A lot of these stories are shockingly recent.

I think people forget just how different things were just a short time ago really.

Things are miles better for women in a lot of ways aren't they

The two world wars showed up the attitude that women as workers were a dispensable force (the attitude behind such things as the marriage bar) - except when they weren't of course. In the two wars women took dangerous/arduous jobs - spies, front line medics/nurses, munition workers, lumberjacks(jills), farmworkers, plane transporters etc. etc. - all work men had decided women were incapable of, until of course, they needed them when they miraculously became capable and after the wars miraculously became incapable again.

It's the attitude of women as second class who should never show their education for long, never have any personal ambition beyond domesticity and be content to trail around dependent on men (consequently at the mercy of male goodwill).

Imagine if fathers all had only one option when they married - househusband with a duty to look after the wife and no alternative but to be dependent on her for their bread. Daft isn't it? Except that was what was expected of women. As a mother that was all you were - for ever.

It was still, to a degree, the attitude when I started work in the early 1960s - the difference being that we were the daughters of the women who had helped Britain to survive the war and were thanked by being told to bugger off back to their aprons and fluffy slippers afterwards. No way were we going to let that happen to us despite the bilbodogs of this world.

I'm surprised no one has pointed out that back in the 20s they didn't have effective contraception. So if you got married, you got pregnant. And then you have all the practical concerns about childcare.

In that time, childcare meant the mothers, unless of course like puddymuddles nan you were lucky enough to be able to employ help.

My eldest (aged 8) asked me the other day why I didn't have the same surname despite being married. We had a very interesting conversation (!) But made me realise how ignorant I am as well.

We somehow how got on to suffrage and when women got the vote. I said it was about 100 years ago, but I think it was even more recent than that. We have come a massively long way.

My aunt didn't, lightening, she adopted a child years after marrying.

So really no excuse for chucking women out of jobs they wanted / needed / enjoyed on the basis that they were going to get pregnant immediately.

It would have made more sense to say that women weren't allowed to work after getting pregnant, if that was what it was really about.

Plus women have always worked on through having children. Whether paid or unpaid. As per "shitwork" comment upthread.

The main reasons for these traditions / rules are rooted in ideas around what women's roles should be, and making sure work is available for men, rather than anything practical.

It would be so lovely to have a financial society that meant that only one wage was needed to support a family.
Why does it seem like a massive jump??

I managed to buy and keep a house on a £9k wage in 1999, okay without a family, but why has it only taken 15 years to get to a stage in the uk where a family with 2 incomes is struggling?
It's insane!

Maybe the woman giving up work (officially and in decent jobs) on order to marry and raise a family was one of the things that kept cost of living low?
I know history well enough to know that's bollocks, but I bet some men at the top had it on their list of "why married women shouldn't work "

tilder sounds like an excellent conversation!

This is where I love the net so much, a DC can ask a question about anything and there it all is. You can go from watching a video of the International Space Station to pictures of the Sufragettes to films of baby leopards it's brilliant

It's the property prices Nickel, a consequence of living on an Island which lots of other people want to live on with you

The purchase by foreign investors of property in London has had a terrible knock-on effect for the rest of the country as well.

So for once, it's not women's fault!

Everything else is of course, obviously

Of course it's women's fault omnipotent! Allowing married women to go out to work, and unmarried couples to cohabit, has meant that there are more two-income households who can afford to buy and spend more money on houses which has put the prices up! Yet another example of how Feminism Has Gone Too Far