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

I came across this by chance and I made me think how much I had forgetten memories of this, not just mine but for instance my mother. She was one of the women who was told she didn't need to worry about paying her NI because as a married woman she would be covered by her husband's contributions. Which when needed turned out not to be true! https://www.gov.uk/reduced-national-insurance-married-women

And one of my first jobs, where I was doing something quite junior, being greeted by some self important young man on seeing me in the role, "its a woman"!

Sorry forgot to add this to my post. It came up on a thread about whether you could say that the previous generation of Labour Women MPs had been feminists.

What some of them really were was committed to Equal Rights, eg Equal Pay Act.

Sometimes I think it a shame that all these has been squashed into one act.

So at that time they would be said to be feminism, but post Women's Liberation that wasn't just about "equal rights" they probably aren't seen as feminist which has a wider analysis of women's discrimination by men, both at work and at home.

Also worth remembering that they had no problem using the word Sex in their campaign so all that rubbish about people have always used gender because it was politer just isn't true.

And on the other hand they had no doubt that when talking about women being discriminated against was because of their gender.

Just think if they were doing it now it would be the Gender Discrimination Act. And of no use to actual women.

So also posted to remember the steps it has taken to get what some of us now accept is normal.

Thanks

My widowed aunt who had a secure job with a good pension as a civil servant, had to get my father to act as a guarantor for her when she applied for a mortgage. Her salary was ample to cover what she needed. This would have been late fifties, early sixties.

And I agree with another poster - the term gender wasn't used in popular speech. It belonged to the world of language learning. I think when it came in it was a coy Americanism, because IMO they can be a prudish.

Not quite the same as Equal Pay, but I remember or heard about an early WLM campaign against Wimpy Bars. (A very british version of beef burgers). Thought tby some young people to be a better place than then very boring pubs.

But ... Wimpy wouldn't allow women to come on their own!

The assumption being if they were on their own they must be prostitutes looking for clients.

This involved a wide range in terms of appearance, age etc., seeing what would happen if they went in on their own.

In fact, I have just checked my facts and it turns out that whether or not the campaign made a difference the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal for outlets to do this.

In fact didn't older pubs have a room that women were supposed to use rather than upset men drinking in the main bar, just by being there?!

Can you imagine nowadays not being able to go and have a nice quiet sit down with a cup of coffee on your in one of the many coffee shops we now have?

@AuntieMsDamsonCrumble Yes, my Mum talked about this. My grandma was a widow and buying a house was very difficult for her even though she had a well-paid job.
I presume that someone (perhaps her brother) had to act as her guarantor.

Also, maternity leave with job protection was very patchy in the 1970’s, very different to nowadays.

Yes, usually the Snug. They had one in the Rovers Return.

Actually it was the European Court of Human Rights in R v R that made the decision that marriage was no exemption to rape in 1991. The UK did not put it into statutory law and make marital rape illegal until 1994.

1994?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's 31 years ago.

Well within the memory of many women.

In the run up to the court ruling putting marital rape on the statute books was discussed in parliament several times. I recall this yahoo arguing that it would be bad to have a crime that criminalized a husband because his wife had a headache, suggesting if it was a bad headache it might be rape but how would you draw the line. His argument showed a view of women that lacked any sort of acceptance that they have agency aside from their husbands.

Unfortunately, the CJS is so reluctant to criminalise men for rape that it almost may as well be legalized.

I meant that, in 1981 my mother was able to inform my headmistress that her daughter WOULD be doing metal work and wood work. That I would not be stuck doing sewing.

Which sowed the seeds of an engineering career in a heavily male dominated field.

(Nowadays that would seemingly make me gender non-conforming...I was going to say "but that's another discussion", but it's actually not)

That was a judgment in the UK Court of Appeal not the ECtHR.

When I was at high school (local comp in Harrow), there was no bar to girls doing anything. However there was a split in the first 2 years, so while you could do metal/wood work or technical drawing, you would be starting from scratch at age 14 when you took your options.

Then the (very) old school headmistress retired and the school got a much more modern up to date head teacher whose first changes were 1)- no more desks in rows and 2) none of this nonsense about pupils choosing subjects.

Which mean my youngest brother couldn't do the same subjects I did ("too sciencey").

The Guardian has published an article looking at the history of who the Act came into being. From a media feminist perspective, but has some interesting information about how feminist activists responded to and took part in the campaign to get the Act passed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/18/pretty-birds-and-silly-moos-the-women-behind-the-sex-discrimination-act

Which decision was again appealed and then finally decided by the European court.

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/docx/pdf?library=ECHR&id=001-45660&filename=S.W.%20v.%20the%20UNITED%20KINGDOM.pdf&logEvent=False

It was the European Court of Human Rights that made the final decision.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Application No. 20166/92
S.W.
against
the United Kingdom
REPORT OF THE COMMISSION
(adopted on 27 June 1994)
TABLE OF CONTENTS

It’s within my marriage even. I was a married woman when it was still legal for my husband to rape me. Socially, it wasn’t even considered to be rape unless it came with a vicious beating.

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.

State in "contributes financially to the creation of its own citizens" shocker. Mat leave is something that normal, civilised countries offer, because the benefits to the State outweigh the costs.

Off the top of my head when it comes to women gaining equality and fighting sex discrimination:

• A female relative had to leave her job in the Irish Civil Service when she got married in the 70s.
• Women were routinely paid less than men for doing the same job.
• In Ireland, contraception was illegal, as was abortion and divorce until my own adulthood.
• I also remember banks refusing credit and credit cards to adult women with jobs.
• My grandmother was 'churched' after every baby she had, well into the late 1950s.
• In the 80s, domestic science was compulsory for girls at my secondary school.
• I also remember the social limitations like women being refused service in pubs, and having to drink 'ladylike' drinks in snugs, and the parish priest railed against women and girls wearing trousers and miniskirts in the late 60s/early 70s.

So much of what we've gained is so recent for many of us here. We really ought to teach this to kids at school, particularly girls, so they know how much has changed for women within living memory, and how potentially fragile it all is.

My grandmother was 'churched' after every baby she had, well into the late 1950s.

Churching is a "welcome back" ritual after the lying-in period, originating in a time when childbirth was often lethal. The only sexist aspect is that the church porch is cold.

Irish Catholic priests of that time were cleansing the women from the sin/impurity associated with childbirth. Many Irish women of my grandmother’s generation (including my grandmother) hated the tradition and were glad it was stopped.

https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/churching-women-after-childbirth-dublin-tenement-1913-1061449-Aug2013/

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0424/1445014-ireland-folklore-conception-pregnancy-births-babies-children/

Ah, more like the Jewish "sin offering" and "burnt offering". Imagine having to pay for a lamb and a dove as a temple offering after childbirth. Interesting that it's been reframed more recently as a blessing and welcome, not as a purging.

I started work in the 60s and the difference is immense.

When was that? I have definitely had a Wimpy without a male partner as a teenager in the 60s.

Churching isn't a particularly Irish or Catholic thing. I knew women in England in the 70s who were churched. I think it was amalgamated into the Baptism of the baby in the Catholic and Anglican churches.

Early 80s - school uniform rules said girls were not allowed to wear trousers.