After a long battle, Britain’s Sex Discrimination Act came into force in 1975. What did it do for women?

[IwantToRetire]

The 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage in 1968 prompted a moment of soul searching for many women frustrated at how little progress seemed to have been made towards equality. One of these was Joyce Butler, the backbench Labour and Co-operative MP for Wood Green. Having had a longstanding interest in women’s rights, she had been instrumental in campaigning to make cervical cancer screening available nationwide. In autobiographical notes later in life she spoke of a sense of ‘unfinished business’.

One day she learned of a woman bus conductor who wanted to become a bus inspector, but could not get the necessary experience to take this step because her employer did not hire women to drive buses. Butler reflected:

Like the light on the Road to Damascus, I realised that this job-and-training discrimination was the key to women’s failure to advance. We already had legislation against race discrimination – what was needed was a similar law for women.

Continues at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/joyce-butler-and-sex-discrimination-act

Not withstanding all the amazing work detailed in that article, it feels like feck all at the moment.

I don’t think our children realise how recent this is. That in our youth, these rights were still in contention.

They seem to have been but fleeting.

George Gently is a lovely drama and it highlights many inequalities women suffered.

One thing that I remember: unmarried women couldn't get the contraceptive pill.

Not sure that’s the case, about the pill, that was 1967 not 1975 I think.

Well, for one thing (although a couple of years later), it enabled me to take out my first mortgage and credit card without a male guarantor. Yes, that's right, in those days you had to ask a man's permission to spend the money that you had earned!

I have never taken my financial independence for granted since.

Women got the vote in 1918 (well, if over 30 and property owners).

I think it’s still important legislation. I remember it coming in when so many commentators said that women would never get jobs again because no one would employ them. Women were only worthwhile hires if they could be paid less (changed in 1970) or restricted to particular jobs. Ongoing court cases with local authorities and the supermarkets show that we still have a way to go but this legislation has made a massive difference to working women’s lives. I think I’ve benefited from it.

I couldn't apply for promotion at work as a female. But I thought never mind I will get my pension at 60 and the men will have ro wait till they are 65...yeah guess what, I was a WASPIE.

When I first went on the pill at the family planning clinic single women were spoken ro like dirt and were sat separately from the married women.

I couldn't get a small tv on credit without a man to co sign.

Single women with children were not given council houses or flats.

Women couldn't go to the bar in the working men's clubs unless it was Bingo night. They could not be members or access the club without a husband or boyfriend.

There was so much more than this. I can't belive how much younger women take their rights for granted.

Although on the up side is we had our own toilets!

Oops just realised I misread the OP - sorry Iwanttoretire 😳

You could definitely get the pill in 1973 - as long as you lied and said you were in a ‘settled relationship’. Weird how every girl at university was in a ‘settled relationship’

I remember being questioned about my BF. his name, address and what his occupation was. This was I think about 1972.

I worked in a building society for a couple of years after leaving school. The reason I left was because they would not let me take the exams to enable promotion (as I "would probably get married and have children, so not worth the funding"). I did get married, but I also found another career and took professional qualifications (partly self-funded) which gave me much better opportunities, so they probably did me a favour in the end. I'm also a WASPI.

Love your name.

This really was a huge social change.

I am no longer of the view though that it is a bad thing when changes like this provoke a lot of social discourse and some pushback, or when it takes some time to make them happen.

When I was younger my inclination was to think, oh, people were just sexists who dislike women. But actually a change like this is a real change in how a person who owns a business is able to decide what is best for that business, and it potentially changes the risks related to that investment. So it's not the case that no one else is being affected, even if it's the case factually that there will be no material effects to a business or even that it will be overall good effects, there is still a principle which is removing a certain amount of discretion in the decisions a business owner makes.

I can understand why someone might feel, I am making the investment here, taking the risk, doing the work, not the state. Why should I be in a position where I cannot decide to hire on whatever basis I think will be best?

And of course women in the workplace on equal terms also led to things like maternity leaves and such, so it had knock on effects that could be significant issues for employers to manage. And I think we could also argue, because of that we have implemented various ways that the state can help employers manage things like maternity leaves, so it has a costs to the state as well.

That is a serious thing to do involving real social investment, and I think very much deserved a robust discussion. And even more, good legislation that thinks carefully about it wants to achieve and knock on effects. Which is something that I feel we haven't seen as much in recent years.

I remember my mum not being able to get a credit card without dad's approval, despite having a job (two actually) and her own bank account. Dad, being an abusive fucker, said no so she never had one.

I think my biggest "relief" was knowing marital rape was no longer legal. Not just for me or my mum but for every single woman everywhere.

I can't believe we are still fighting for our basic rights 😕

Marital rape was only declared illegal in 1991 sixteen years after the Sex Discrimination Act.

Yes I know it was a lot later, but it was also another watershed moment for women. A bloody big one imo.

I was born in 1961 and wasn’t properly aware of the changes at the time, as a teenager. By the time I was leaving for uni to do a chemistry degree, in 1979, I was able to just walk into Barclays, get a current account - and a Barclaycard because it was also their ‘cheque guarantee’ card! Then at uni the health centre getting the pill (a few years later) was a complete non event.

I had no idea of my privilege versus if I’d been born ten or twenty years earlier. And I thought equality was a totally done deal - never had any sexist shite in my work either. I was the epitome of ‘I’m all right, Jill’

I'm older than this law. And I'm not yet retired.

Let that sink in as you start to realise how recent and shallow womens rights have existed for.

Speaking directly, it did for Birmingham City Council, whose present day woes can be traced back directly to their refusal to accept this law at every step of the way.

I recollect that if you joined or left and rejoined the Civil Service you were restricted to the entry grades of Clerical Assistant or Clerical Officer. A woman challenged this as indirect discrimination and won because it affected women disproportionately. My cousin three years older than me was caught out by this. I benefitted because as a result I was able to join on an Executive Officer grade.

There were exceptions for Graduate Schemes - which seemed to favour the men, IMO.

You also have situations like women being shunted into non graduate teaching certificate courses, whereas the men with the same qualifications would be encouraged to go to university. Making the courses all graduate did put an end to this.

I think what it did was empowered us - we felt that we no longer had to take second best i.e. non graduate versus graduate teaching qualifications, nursing rather than training as doctors etc.

A friend at university applied to Medical school and was turned down due to the quota system.
Today:
Female doctors are greater in number than their male counterparts for the first time ever in the UK, the General Medical Council (GMC) has announced today.

However that hasn't stopped discrimination inside the NHS.
And now have the 'feminization of society' theory is circulating.

Celebrate but maintain vigilance, it's not over yet.
⁰

Another one asking for the contraceptive pill in 1977 as a 16 year old. Maybe I was luckier than I realise at the time, because the women working at the family planning centre (as it was called then) were very nice to me. I was asked no questions about my boyfriend.

Another Waspi here.
When the act came in I was working at a well-known airline, where women had to give up work as air hostesses when they got married, reached the age of 30 or were deemed overweight.
Prior to that I worked in a department where the head was a woman, who earned less than the half a dozen men she was in charge of.
Later, a friend who divorced and got her own mortgage found her mortgage interest tax relief was being paid to her ex-husband and had to fight HMRC to get it back.
Unfortunately the marital rape law was brought in too late for me.
I am so pleased when I see my daughters progressing through the world without all these handicaps to overcome, but will be even happier a when the remaining prejudices fall. Including of course the threats to women as a sex class: none of this birthing people and born in the wrong body if you didnt conform to gender norms.

Yes! I was a CA

Yes, my parents were teachers - she went to teacher training college, he went to uni. I don’t actually know if he did a teaching qualification.

DDs girls’ grammar school once listed the ‘leavers destinations ‘ ca 1950 - whereas now the majority will be heading to uni, back then it was a few but lots going into teacher training and nursing - no degrees.

Thanks - I hadn't realised you had!