1961 women's employment - wow!

[ifIwerenotanandroid]

Someone found this letter in a house she bought, & posted it on X. I've never seen anything like that before.

This is why we should all listen to the generations who came before us: we may think we know what's what, but history can always surprise us. I've been amused by posters on X claiming this weekend that there have never been communal changing rooms for women in the UK & that no teenage girls ever went shopping with their friends for fun. As a member of the biddy mafia I know they're wrong but they're quite insistent, even the men.

That's wonderful for you of course but none of that means that systemic sexism didn't have an effect on the average woman at the time. My mum is an early Waspi and remembers being unable to get a bank account as her father died while she was in her teens and she needed a mans signature. She ended up marrying young so she could buy a house.

I'm not saying that that everyone suffered or needs to be paid off but I do think the above should be recognised. Legal equality now doesn't help the women effected 50 years ago. We all know about the compound effect of wealth.

Then she was going to the wrong bank.

I had a bank account and was paid into it at 18 in 1976. I didn't need anyone's signature but my own.

I bought my share of a house when I wasn't even married, in 1978.

I don't recognise what your mother went through even though we are almost the same age if she is an early Waspi.

A counter to this.

Doing research into a friend's family history I discovered that mining communities tried to help miners widows by giving them priority to jobs above ground. The pits normally reserved these jobs for men who were elderly or incapacitated but some made an effort to help these women. The work was still precarious as a result as these women would be sacked first in periods of low employment availability.

This group of working class 'pit lasses' who dressed in trousers for practical reasons for the job to protect themselves from the elements in Victorian era who were frowned upon by Middle Class Society as 'degenerates' as a result and some how immoral purely because of the way they dressed. They were seen as novelty and photographed as a result and there were campaigns by Middle Class groups to ban them without thought as to how these women would otherwise survive destitution. This work was very hard manual labour and these photos show the women holding huge shovels and picks I'd struggle to even lift.

The practice had pretty much completely disappeared by the time WWI arrived though.

It's fascinating on many levels. It wasn't something I was aware of. My friend was utterly fascinated and really proud about it that this was her heritage.

Isnt that the point - that it was a lottery if the equality laws were followed? Some women benefited but others continued to be discriminated against which is terrible

This is such an interesting thread.

Just because some women were able to get bank accounts / get a mortgage without a man's signature in 1976 doesn't mean all women were, far from it.

A lot of this is in living memory and a lot of us older women well remember what it was like and how ingrained and acceptable sexism was (and is still but some things have improved).

I'm sorry but when I said "then she went to the wrong bank", I meant that I don't believe that any women in 1976 had a problem finding a bank which would open an account for them without their father's signature, nor that they needed to marry to get a mortgage in 1978. Unless there was some line somewhere north of Reading where the Coop Bank and the Building Society rules changed as you stepped over it.

I'm sure there were local differences. This was the Midland Bank in a small rural town - not at the cutting edge of liberal thought back in the mid 1970s !

Sure I got what you meant

I was trying to say that if you don’t know any better and an authority figure says no, and you have got no one to advise you what to do (esp as as a young person) then you just accept it.

If someone has been patronising or made you feel lesser or unreasonable for asking, i for one am less likely to keep trying. It’s a confidence knock isnt it?

I got some dreadful advice from a high street bank back in 2008 (unrelated to being female) and the way it was said made me think I couldn’t get what I wanted anywhere. The bank could have advised it was a specialist service. But they didn’t and I took them - as my trusted bank - at their word. Having made that mistake once im less likely now to do it again but it’s such an easy trap to fall into!

So yes the PP did probably pick the wrong bank to ask - but that’s what makes it even more unfair. All your extra years of independence, access to capital and the magic of compounding denied to someone else on the basis of sex. Just rubbish really

Going back to the Good Old Days of course an old fashioned bank manager had a lot of discretion.

A former colleague got a mortgage at 18 because her father had a lot of business with his local bank.

thats interesting- I was wondering whether those in small places or with family connections benefitted from local knowledge for endorsement

I had to have my parent sign off on my first bank account, but I was 9, and I assume it would have been the same for a boy.

I'm sure being known in a small town helped. When my father died (2091), we had a handwritten letter of condolence from the bank manager, who had known him for decades. Don't think that would happen now.

I remember in 1984 my XMiL being incredulous that I earned the same as a male teacher.

"But he might have a family to support" It never entered her head that a woman might have to support a family.

I was turned down for a job interview with a computer firm because IT is a "man's job". This was around 2006.

There were redundancies in a company I worked in in 2014 and mysteriously all of the people made redundant were women in their late 20s / early 30s with long-term partners or husbands. It was quite the coincidence. 🤔

Where I currently work, one male-dominated department get access to a carpark next to the office "because they sometimes have to work late" but the female-dominated department next door who are contracted to work until 8pm are expected to walk across town.

I routinely experience people being surprised that I still have a job and a disabled child. Nobody has ever commented on their dad working full-time.

The women on my current work project are routinely passed over for opportunities and ignored / talked over by the male manager.

Even with laws in place discrimination is still there. I wouldn't have believed some of the stuff I've experienced still happens back when I was young and first entered the workplace, but it does. Many of my male friends and younger friends are oblivious until I point it out.

In 2004. I has hosting at a cocktail party. (Not an euphanism, it was a charity event... we just had to make snall talk with various dignitaries).

On hearing I had just passed my MEng... the boss of an engineering firm actualky asked me... "Do you need a job, we need more female engineers".

1. He had no idea of my capabilities
2. It was a maritime Engineering firm. My qualifications were in Medical Engineering and Computational Biology. I knew nothing about boats.

In 2004. I has hosting at a cocktail party. (Not an euphanism, it was a charity event... we just had to make snall talk with various dignitaries).

On hearing I had just passed my MEng... the boss of an engineering firm actualky asked me... "Do you need a job, we need more female engineers".

1. He had no idea of my capabilities
2. It was a maritime Engineering firm. My qualifications were in Medical Engineering and Computational Biology. I knew nothing about boats.

🤦‍♀️Ooh, my dd likes boats… but she’s got a job in her own branch of engineering (electronics) so is already serving as the token woman there. She’ll go to training courses and conferences and when registering it’ll be ‘ah, you must be Ms Dragon’…

Early 90s my friend was married and in her 20s with no desire to have kids - she has never had any.
She was turned down for a teaching job because "She'll be having a baby soon and it's so much faff having people on maternity leave ". The worst thing was that it was two female headteachers doing the interviewing.

A friend who had a hotshot financey job in a a big City firm was taken to one side and asked outright if she was pregnant "because we noticed you weren't drinking the other night." This was only about 15 years ago.

My boss told me he wanted a female voice to answer the telephone as it was more professional.

This was 2012.

I started work in 1962 so I worked through this, I fought through this, I lived through this. As the old trope goes: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

It's why my default is Fuck Off, whether it's the 'fashion' for trad wives, saying transwomen are women, taking on salesmen who think you know nothing about cars, people who talking slowly and patronisingly to older people/women. You name it - fuck off is where it's at.

@DreamingBe, your post shows how far we still have to go even though great strides have been made in the past hundred years or so. It still seems as if it it is two paces forward, one back, sadly.

Is this a typo ? I started work in 1969 and opened a bank account with Barclays without being asked for a male to co- sign.
Definately yes to communal ( female ) changing rooms. I was touched up in one by an older lady when I was young and innocent.

My young end millennial DDs have had similar, strangely nobody ever asks DSs about their family plans.

I was asked overtly at interviews, many years after the Equalities act (and pregnancy is still the commonest reason for women losing jobs). There was no women’s loo on the male dominated floor where I first worked. This was not uncommon when going to clients - I would sometimes be directed to the secretaries floor/area. I can also remember many promotion/review sessions where men would still raise a woman’s likelihood of having children or suggest that someone doing 4 days a week couldn’t possibly deliver as much as a man doing 5 (it was always a man). A factor which was never raised when considering 4 day per week men. We eventually instituted mandatory HR presence at the key sessions but not at the local sessions - too many of them. Good leads would stamp on this in the session but a lot of the men would just not notice.

I remember my DF having to countersign a bank account application - I was born in the 60s. However I’m not sure if it was because I was female or under 18 (but it was my DF who had to countersign). At that time the vast majority of people were at work by 16 but I also knew plenty who were paid in weekly wage packets and did not have bank accounts.

When we took out our first mortgage I was already the higher earner but was counted as the second income. Not all BSs did this but at that time you had to have a minimum 6 month regular saving to apply for a mortgage so switching wasn’t easy.

There was a cost in attending grammar school. I remember overhearing a late night conversation between my parents about how they would find the money for uniforms and non optional “extras” and wondering if they could do it. It was a hardship and many parents could not or would not pay it, especially for girls. I knew plenty of bright boys who had to go the secondary school but a lot more girls - if they could only get together the money for one child it would be the eldest boy. I knew many girls whose had to leave school as soon as they qualified for work as education was “wasted” on girls and it was more important for them to get into the workplace and start saving for their future married life.

I’ve seen relatively recent surveys where respondents say that if they could only fund/support one child through a more costly education then the boy would be funded over a girl.

Social selection has not left many grammar areas, its not difficult if the school or parent governers wish to make it so. The grammar area nearest to us has several grammars which do an effective job of deterring low income families by emphasising expectations around size of contributions to the school fund, expectations around multiple variations of PE kit and equipment, expectations on attendance at various residentials etc. The schools doing this tend to have intakes which are almost exclusively from private primaries or heavily tutored for the 11+.