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.

One thing I've noticed in recent times, is young(ish), female bank staff referring to me as dear. They don't say it to men.

It's a boot on the other foot issue. I can't imagine ot happening in banks to women in their 60s, forty years ago.

A family member, university educated and with several years in her profession wanted to buy a house as a single woman in about 1976. Despite having a really good deposit and a good income, she had to ask my grandfather to sign as guarantor. At that time he was retired and had just his state pension and a small work pension. That was not important. It was the fact that he was a man that was important. I started work aged 17 in 1979. Although my employer (civil service) paid us equally, it was clear that promotion boards were very much weighted in favour of male candidates. My then bf worked in a bank. Women were not included in the bank pension scheme. Only the males paid into the 'widows and orphans' fund. Women were not allowed to wear trousers - I remember he had a colleague who had bone cancer which particularly affected her legs. She had to have special permission from head office to be allowed to wear trousers to work.

I remember being unable to open a bank account for my student loan unless my father signed as guarantor. This was in 1981.

I remember the 1950s and 60s. My father was a policeman, so my mother was not allowed to work - officially not allowed to by the Police Force. She found herself a job as a school dinner lady in 1962, so my father asked the Force for permission to allow her to keep the job. It was refused.

I went to University in 1968. I was told many times by many different people that I should not be there as I was "denying a man his place".

Women have had to work hard for their rights.

Oops. Grant, not loan, obviously. How quickly we forget!

According to Google, that had been illegal since an act was passed in 1975. Did you try and find a bank that would treat you as a responsible adult?

ETA no you shouldn't have had to!

No, I didn't. I was eighteen and just about to leave home for the first time; to be honest I was glad to have my father's advice. I'm aware now that the Act had been passed in 1975, but at the time that was the kind of knowledge that fell firmly in "that's the kind of stuff Dad knows about". It's a possibility, of course, that individual bank managers were given a measure of latitude in how they operated their own branches, and I'm quite aware that where I grew up in the South Wales valleys wasn't, to put it mildly, winning any prizes for progressive social attitudes - that's why I was taking my baby dyke self off to London in the first place!

You have now suggested to quite a few posters that

a) the law changed in 1975, therefore it never happened
b) if it did happen, it shouldn't have
c) it didn't happen to you, therefore it never happened to anyone else

and now you're implying that it's the poster's own fault, and they should have found another bank.

This is not helpful, clever, or really contributing to the conversation in any meaningful way. Suggesting to some posters that they should have done something else in 1981 is useless.

The bank where I had my issues was the only bank for thirty miles (in rural Wales, not the most progressive of places, as the previous poster has pointed out). And, as everything was done in person or by post in those days, it was the easiest option for me.

I'm willing to accept that different locations/branches/companies/banks had different policies towards women. In one case, my chosen building society had 2 different policies within 5 minutes!

I went into a branch to open an account in the 1980s when 'Ms' was a controversial title for women. I asked to open it with that title & was told that I couldn't. I argued my point for a while but apparently it was completely impossible, so I admitted defeat but took a cheap parting shot: "Well, if your system can't cope with 'Ms', I'll open an account with a building society that can!" & turned to walk away - at which point the cashier decided that yes, of course they could use any title I wished. 😂 It's 40 years later & I still have accounts with them. B!st!rds turned me down for a mortgage, though.

Well I might take your slap on the wrist if I'd said any of those things but that's a gross misrepresentation of what I actually wrote.

I find it fascinating that banks still weren't following the law years later in some places, and I'm also bemused how long we women put up with things that weren't even legal. And we're still being told to put up and shut up today, as other posts on this thread make clear.

Oh, yes, the Ms thing. I had that problem as well. Things really were very different back then, and I'm glad that we are where we are now, although we obviously have challenges to deal with. Mum used to say she couldn't believe the things that women could do when I was young (late 70s and early 80s), things she never would have dreamed of, like not getting married (!) which is sad, really. But shows how far we have come.

No, I think if you read back through your posts, you will see that you did say those things. To several posters. Maybe you didn't mean it, but that's what you said.

My father told me that he wouldn't support me to go to university in 1976 because I was a girl. He earned too much for me to get a grant as both my brothers were adults by then.

It's one of the reasons that I didn't go to university.

I had no idea that police wives were forbidden to work.

Another way in which I was fortunate is that 12 years after you went to university I did the same and not one single person told me I should not be there. Was it related to the subject you were studying, possibly? Engineering, medicine, something else obviously vocational? I read Classics, which was probably less subject to that kind of thing.

I'm so sorry. That's dreadful.

That's two of you who had these issues in Wales. I expect one of the reasons I never experienced any of that was because I was at secondary school in a large Northern city when I first opened a bank account, and then at university in London.

I think people who've not experienced living in a place where there really is only one feasible place to do a thing don't grasp how difficult that can make things. My mother's bank closed down the only branch on her island. They sent a cheery message not to worry because her nearest branch now was only x miles away [as the seagull flies] and that she could reach this by getting a ferry from Y to Z. I nearly choked when I saw this. It was obviously generated from a template designed for people whose village or small town on the mainland had lost its branch. Their letter would have made more sense. Explaining to islanders that they could travel to the mainland on a ferry was utterly tone deaf, especially as the ferry in question has had massive - Nicola Sturgeon! Hand me my wet fish. Gulp. No. Calm down, Gasp. some problems in recent years, so is one of the main topics of conversation on the island. Thank goodness for (a) power of attorney and (b) online banking.

[diversion over. back to the thread]

It was illegal to ask me about my plans for a family when I started work. Do you really think the world changed that fast?

Plus of course bank branches/organisational branches had far more autonomy than now. When my building society in the 80s insisted my higher income had to be the lower multiple the alternative was to go away, find another building society, save for 6 months to be considered for a mortgage and then hope to gods the manager was not the same as the previous. Shopping around for financial services was often not a realistic option. When my DF countersigned my bank application at 16 I had school friends experiencing exactly the same with the other high street banks.

Its 50 years since the equality act and maternity is still one of the top reason for women losing jobs and promotions . Young women are still regularly judged on their likely fertility by employers.

Did you go to a girls' school? I'm trying to envisage any of the three formidable women who were Headmistress during my time at secondary school tackling a father who said something of this nature about one of my schoolmates. It wouldn't have been pretty. However, as I've already said on this thread, I think I was incredibly lucky to go to a school where expectations for girls were very high. My year group has had several reunions and it's notable how even the girls who left after O levels and didn't do A levels (few in number) have done extremely well in later life. There was a get up and go spirit in the air.

It is but it worked out really well for me and we're back in a situation now where I would recommend any 18 year old who doesn't have a specific need for a degree for a job they have set their heart on to go out and get a job or apprenticeship. If they can find one!

I remember my discussion with my "careers master" who had been my O level Italian teacher. He told me only about clerical jobs and said there was no point in applying for the higher level Civil Service entry (Executive Officer?) as I wouldn't get it, but to go for Clerical Officer instead. I went for EO and got through, but went somewhere else instead.

No, well only for 2 terms and then my parents moved. It was dreadful! They actually made us lift our skirts to show we were wearing regulation school knickers!!

I do see that girls schools can be very good for girls, though.

I'm lucky, I think, I was born full of fight and never accepted other people's limitations for me. If I'd had something I really wanted to study I'd have found a way to go to University. I got a degree level qualification later on when it was relevant to my career.

Sex wasn’t the only factor IME but it was one. I was a STEM student and a big name university with the distaff side of sex, class and minority in a department of mostly white public schoolboys. It can be hard to know which factor is dominant in any one situation but the very few other girls were white MC, there were a few white WC boys, the handful of minority students were mostly private school/overseas students. I had my share of staff and students assuming I was low grade staff.

If I’d studied English at, say, Kings, Bristol or Manchester I would likely have been less of an oddity as the intakes even then would have been a little more diverse.

Denying a man his place @LyricalSixties. Yes, that attitude was common into the Eighties.

I remember my Dad employing a secretary. My parents talked about her salary as just being 'pin money '. Explaining that she didn't need the money because her husband kept her. There was definitely the attitude that part time women's work was pocket money basically and anything more serious was denying a man the chance to provide for his family.

I don't remember really analysing these things as a kid but I did go on to work in male dominated job and was a 'tom boy '. No wonder!

I didn't realise you were only 16. Im not sure, but I think an adult would still be required to guarantee a bank account for a sixteen year old but of course it could be Mum?

And I'm sorry that other people are going to interpret this as putting you down when it isn't, it's just an illustration of the lengths we had to go to, but when we need a mortgage in 1978 the Building Societies weren't lending because there weren't enough savings. We went through a broker and got a mortgage with a tiny regional BS we'd never even heard of, with no history of saving with them whatsoever. It cost more, of course. And you need to live within reach of a broker, too, which wasn't available for everyone.

Women do still face barriers, that's for sure. In the eighties, I used to write on my CV that my status was "Married with no children and plans to keep it that way." I was told once it was the reason I got an interview. I got offered the job too, and turned it down 😁

My parents loved watching TV. In in the 1970s a recurring theme in sitcoms and dramas was how bored married women often were at home and their schemes to get a job and have something to do and some money of their own, often in the teeth of disapproval from other family members and/or the husband forbidding it.

(Obviously, sitcoms mostly showed middle class women who didn't need the money. A long way from the real world where most women who went back to work once the children were at school very much did need the money so the family income could stretch to a decent holiday, upgrading to colour TV, installing central heating, getting a fitted kitchen and supporting their children at university, all of which my mother's teaching salary enabled.)

I am delighted to hear that she was never ousted by a man. What a lovely coincidence that you and she are both on this thread.