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.

OP, just wondering, sorry if it's already been answered, do you know what's happened to the original letter from your OP?

R v R (1991) is the case about rape in marriage. Before 1991 there was no such thing.

disgusting really.

the equal pay thing - I don’t disagree with in principle. The sad result of it, and unintended consequence is that now, everything costs significantly more, homes need 2 salaries to be affordable, and childcare is eye watering. Women were sold a lie about being able to have it all. We can’t.

not really progressive in the way that it was intended.

I went to a school like yours and had a father like @Imdunfer's. I can't imagine how you think a headmistress could have challenged a man's decisions on his own household budget - set him some lines, make him stay in at break??

I went to an all girls grammar school where the headmistress refused to sign UCCA forms (as Ucas was called then) for any girl who wanted to apply for medicine or law. This was the later 1970s and still was still there until the mid 80s with the same outlook. Girls got around this by leaving, working for a year and getting their employer to sign. Risky in those days as gap years were highly unusual and medicine was notorious for not liking gap years. I know several who were successful with this route despite, not because of her outdated views.

She, the headmistress, really was a bag of contradictions; she lived with her close female friend, which was suspicious even in those days!

the headmistress refused to sign UCCA forms for any girl who wanted to apply for medicine or law

OMG, @DPotter 😡 any idea why? She must have been asked!

the headmistress refused to sign UCCA forms for any girl who wanted to apply for medicine or law

She probably thought that they would get ideas above their station.

We were expected to have modest ambitions, and in that our headmistress wasn't disappointed. Really we were being prepared to be wives to men in the same mould as our fathers came out of: middle managers, the doctor, the dentist, the local solicitors, the bank manager, the town clerk. Mine numbered in one of those.

There was just so much talent wasted. But she herself never married and quite a few of the senior mistresses were single. (Some were good, others had only gone into teaching because there weren't the choices available to women.)

we were being prepared to be wives to men in the same mould as our fathers came out of

I went to a class reunion in 1995, when we were all 30. I was very startled to learn that the main focus of competition between classmates seemed to be the status of their husbands! It was only then that I realised the truth of what you've said, @Peregrina.

The few of us with careers we cared about ended up huddling in another room. Interestingly, half of this group were the 'bad girls' who'd been viewed, at best, as non-compliant.

Our careers visitor was shite, as well. She told me that as I clearly had 'ideas' (didn't want to be a teacher or civil service admin) I should aim to be a secretary at the Foreign Office. This being presented as the pinnacle of ambition, I did actually start a bilingual secretarial course. By week three, it was clear that secretaries sat in meetings to write down what the delegates said. I wanted to be at the table, so I changed courses.

The girls who ended up as surgeons, finance wizards and world-changers were the ones with parents who knew how wide the horizon really is. School did us a great deal of good, but failed terribly at showing us our potential.

This is a fascinating thread - partly depressing but also optimistic to see how things have improved - albeit some way to go!

it’s reminded me of a colleague who announced in our male dominated office tgat there was no point educating and training women as they just went off to have babies and never came back.

in some ways he was correct that historically this had happened but we were on the cusp of that changing. He got his ear well chewed off 🤣

If I were of the younger generation I’d have “cancelled him”. But Apart from some dodgy attitudes he’s a good chap and I now employ him. I prefer the latter as it earns me decent money and is quietly satisfying so there’s a lot to be said for having a thick skin 😎

A friend recommended the Leicester Building society to me in the 70s exactly because if you saved £50/month they guaranteed you a mortgage after two years even as a single woman. The only one that did IIRC

Honestly, some people (and I'd surmise that many of those on this thread who "had no problem" and doubt everyone else's experiences were much more middle class than those who did) have absolutely NO idea about how life works for those without their own privilege.

Was the case then. Still the case now.

It's incredibly easy to be complacent about your rights when you've not personally seen the impact of them either being taken away or not being enacted, and when you've not been a position where you don't have the power to change that.

😁

To be honest I think most head teachers in the 70s would have agreed with our fathers. That there was no point spending money on the education of a girl who was only going to get married and have children anyway.

To be honest I think most head teachers in the 70s would have agreed with our fathers. That there was no point spending money on the education of a girl who was only going to get married and have children anyway.

And yet the unmarried headmistress and two senior mistresses at my school would have known from first hand experience that not all women would get married - and would need to support themselves. One of the senior mistresses at my school was believed not to have married because her fiance was killed in the war so was perhaps relying on special war time circumstances for her spinsterhood.

My own mother tended to think like that, and I think it was partly because she was denied a proper education, so was trying to rationalise why it wasn't necessary. Then again occasionally she would come out with statements like "educate a woman and you educate a family."

I think you have to note that the default option was that your career was marriage and children.

The same boss who wanted a female voice on the phone, openly told me how screwed the business would be if I ever got pregnant as he wouldn't be able to afford it. Again I was there until 2012.

What?!

I believe that Statutory Maternity pay comes out of the NI contributions of other employees. How many other staff were there?

Three. There were five of us in total. The boss didn't take a proper wage and instead paid himself out of dividends I believe.

This is fascinating. I wonder if a big difference between my school and some others described here is that it was a direct grant school, not a grammar school. This is a category of school introduced by the 1944 Education Act in England and abolished by Labour in the mid 70s. (The Assisted Places scheme introduced by Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s was similar but the numbers of pupils involved were nothing like as big.)

Direct grant schools were independent and fee-paying but academically selective. They agreed with the LEA to take a substantial number of children who did extremely well in the 11+ or the school's own entrance exam and had previously attended state primary schools. The children with the highest marks were given 100% scholarships. At my school 10-15 out of just under 90 in the year group were in that position, IIRC. Over half of the other girls in my year were there on means tested fees and their parents were often paying very little. There was a substantial discount for siblings also attending direct grant schools. The remainder were there on full fees, usually because they'd attended the junior department.

What all this means is that every girl at my school was there because her parents had decided that it was worth paying for her education or because they had made a decision to accept the offer of a place at this school, which for most of us was not the nearest. No wonder the vast majority proceeded to higher education or professional training. It was what our parents wanted and what the staff wanted.

I repeat, I was incredibly lucky.

The boss didn't take a proper wage and instead paid himself out of dividends I believe.

I always understood that to be a tax dodge of some sort.

Probably.

He also knew I held the business together and did the work of about three or four people despite working part time as I knew it inside out. I ran the business when he wasn't around.

After I left, the business didn't do well and went under within three years. Not sure exactly when.

It does, but small companies can apply for exemptions if there aren’t enough employees. Then it’s covered by HMRC.

He also knew I held the business together and did the work of about three or four people despite working part time as I knew it inside out. I ran the business when he wasn't around.

Thinking back to my first job, 16 years old as a junior assistant for a small branch of a large financial services company. Every branch manager was male, the entire sales force was male. All the PAs, administrators and assistants were women. The branch manager was treated like a God and his sales boys demi gods. We were always told how important they were and what a stressful and important job they did. They brought in the business but it was always in such a mess that we women were the ones chasing, sorting, making sure the paperwork was compliant and getting the applications completed. Reassuring clients and sorting out issues. While the men were celebrated with conventions abroad, bonus payments, freebies. As well as that dealing with their expenses, sorting out their personal affairs too. We all knew who really kept the branch afloat. Then shock horror the first woman was taken on as a sales advisor. What a revelation, she could sell and organise her paperwork. She maintained her client base so efficiently. She did all her own expenses. She made phone calls and shock horror even typed her own memos and letters most of the time. She had to put up with a lot from the guys with the usual sexist jokes but looking back they were scared as she burst open the bubble of these privileged men. I was there about four years and in that time we had 4 or 5 more women on the sales force who were head and shoulders more successful than the men. Another branch finally appointed a woman as the branch manager. I was able to study and pass professional exams and eventually moved into what was previously a job for the boys. The myth of only a man could do this oh so complicated work was broken. Women could and did do it better, more efficiently and without the golf afternoons that we were told were essential!

It’s not a “tax dodge”, it’s a legal and established way to make company directors more tax efficient.

if they weren't able to take dividends they’d have to pay tax and nI on their own wages, and also pay corporation tax. Which costs the company money in the long run, which will have a knock on effect to PAYE employees.

My school was a standard GS in a ‘coastal’ area which in the year I joined doubled in size as a ‘bilateral’ year before becoming a comp. I wasn’t aware of any discouragement of girls wanting to continue into HE though probably the proportion was lower than the lads.
But I may have just been oblivious … I was clear I wanted to do a chemistry degree and my A level teacher was my fully supportive dad. I’m all right, Jill.

"Unsuitable professions for a woman" was the standard answer.

Sadly she gave the impression of a woman pulling up the ladder behind her. Yet she was inordinately proud of any Oxbridge successes. Other teachers were far more encouraging, especially the science teachers.

My mother grew up in rural Ireland at a time when it was vitally important that girls went into paid employment because tiny farms could not support large numbers of adult family members. She had six sisters - three of them were graduates, two of their aunts were graduates (via the route that started with a teaching qualification).

In contrast, their brother left school at 14, because he was going to inherit the land. He knew that if his only brother, who had died in infancy, had survived, the brother would have got the farm and uncle would have been 'expected' (no choice) to become a priest and follow the example of previous generations of providing the school fees for nephews and nieces in exchange of farm-raised food and shooting rights.

It wasn't just women who got a tough deal in the past.

My mother studied in Ireland but went to England after graduating and either taught of lectured before and after her marriage in 1955, until she returned to a lecturing job in Ireland just after the marriage bar was lifted.

We had quite the reverse. The cleverest girl in my year declined to apply for medicine because she and her family thought nursing more suitable for a girl. The Headmistress did her very best to persuade her to do medicine. However, the girl who became a nurse had the last laugh. She became CEO of an NHS Trust!