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.

Tbf, she’d probably have ended up CEO whether she’d chosen medicine or nursing. Or anything else for that matter.

My 16 year old dd had a careers day recently.

she was appalled that for examples of careers they went round the room asking what everyone’s dad did.

there was no mention of women or careers at all.

my job is far more “interesting” than Dh’s. No thought that women could earn more or have “better” jobs.

My uncles father in law must have been born in about 1900.

Just young enough to avoid serving in WW1 & just old enough to avoid WW2

He had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the fact that his sister went to University but he could not as his parents could not afford to send both.

All company owners do that for beneficial tax reasons so it is no indication that his business wasn't in fact raking it in

I did the books. (But wasn't allowed to do payroll). It wasn't raking it in but it wasn't that bad either. The biggest problem was my boss was not remotely organised. I used to wait until he was out the office and then raid the paperwork on his desk for new jobs that he'd forgotten, file all his quotes, grab the bills to be paid (and then gradually give them to him when they were due), chase the payments and just generally made sure he didn't drop an absolute clanger. Oh and when he was away I made all the orders and organised the production line and deliveries. If any customer rang I immediately knew the job and could talk to them about it without looking it up. On three days a week.

Thanks for posting OP it's an eye opener isn't it.
I recall my mother saying that back in 1960s, once a woman got married (she married in the 1960s) there was an expectation that she left her job to look after her husband and have children which is what she did.
During the my teenage years in the 1970s, things rapidly changed and more women, including married women were in the workplace. I was determined to be one of them once I left education. By the time I started work at the beginning of the 1980s, women, whatever their status were accepted in the workforce but there was still a lot of misogyny for us ladies to deal with, which would quite rightly, be totally unacceptable now.

@fetchacloth

Maybe at that time amongst a certain demographic, but in the north the cotton mills were filled with women working, and children until it was outlawed. Many worked the evening shift after their husband had done the day shift

Did anyone point out they should be asking what mothers do as well? Or just parents?

i suspect the majority of kids do still live in traditional households split along gender roles. So dad earns the money and mum does only have “a little job” for extra cash. So the kids that were asked did just give dad’s job as that is the default.

dd wasn’t called upon, so she just fumed to herself.

i am constantly suprised on here when women want to give up work or go part time. It’s always phrased as to be only an option to the mum- no one ever posts to ask if both going part time and sharing responsibilities is a good idea.

we’ve come a long way in many ways but people still seem to default to man earns/woman cares.

My DD did an engineering internship with a big company which was actively trying to recruit and retain women. Her boss there was a very nice supportive man, but he managed to wade in with ‘so, does your dad do anything technical’. To which her reply was, ‘well yes, but let me tell you about mum’s job first…’

😯that’s shocking!

My DD’s girls school has an excellent careers session. They get only women volunteers in and divide the girls into groups of about half a dozen. They get 3 minutes to ask questions tgat the volunteers can answer yes or know, got or cold etc. at the end they write down what they think the job is on a slip. The volunteers move on to the next group until all are done and all the slips go into an envelope which is collected. Once the chance to cheat has been removed the volunteers stand up and introduce themselves and their jobs. Over the years theyve had brilliant interesting women: doctor, boxer, cyber security lead in banking; engineer, musician, journalist, research scientist, poet, project manager. Too many to remember but the boxer was the most surprising as she was super glam so all the girls thought she worked in fashion! Very few started out expecting to do the jobs they end up with. Makes for a really fun session

Funnily enough my mum saw more WW2 action in the "naice" part of East London where she lived than my dad who served in the RAF and spent most of his time in the US to train for a secret mission that never took place because the War ended.

The government paid for his University ... and my mum paid the £5 for his BA to become an MA from her typist wages.

I think one of the problems is that HR and higher management are all about getting more women in, but the bulk of people you work with, at least at the outset, are the masses of men, who have not been through the training about it, or read the papers on how more diverse workplaces are usually more profitable, etc. And so the biases remain.

I joined Border Force (Then the Immigration Service) in 1990. In a few years it had gone from a white male older demographic to a more balanced one with waves of recruitment to manage the new phenomenon of asylum seekers.
One of the women who was a few years ahead of me said she had been stopped in the corridor by one of the old lags on her first day and he’d said “You don’t belong here” and strode off.
If that guy is still alive today he’d be horrified to learn that airport is now ‘manned’ with over 50% women and they’ve all worked their way to the top management levels too.

I had a medical degree interview at a London Uni in the mid 80s. One of their first questions (all male panel) was ‘what does your father do?’.

Not yet read the full thread but even as far as I’ve bookmarked, the content of the posts is incredible. Someone should make a documentary series from it! That letter is the perfect starting point.

That sounds tremendous. Well done to whoever came up with that idea!

I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread. It’s clear that both sexism and socioeconomic inequality have a lot to answer for.

I was born in London in 1972 and grew up in the slipstream of 2nd wave feminism. As a result, I’m ashamed to say, I believed the narrative that boys and girls were equal. It was my experience. My mum was a barrister (no degree but had the opportunity to study as part of a civil service job and did really well). Some historical stories e.g. that my mum’s chambers had no women’s loo that we all laughed heartily at now things had changed for the better.

I came face to face with alive and kicking sexism in the workplace when I had my kids though. In 2004 the company I worked for re-jigged the salary bands. Anyone who didn’t get the base rate for their level would get a raise but if you were already above the threshold you wouldn’t. I had been at my level for two or three years and didn’t get a raise. Imagine my shock when someone I was managing had a query about the process and showed me her letter which set out all the bands. I was being paid significantly under the threshold for my level. I asked my director why this was the case and he said “I think it’s because you’re going on maternity leave next month”. Of course I marched off to HR to report what I had been told and they wittered on about there having been an”admin error”. I got my raise but the b@st@rds made me redundant in 2007 while on my second maternity leave.

I then met so many women who had been forced out of their jobs either by redundancy or constructive dismissal and learned that there is still a lot to fight for despite the laws. Employers are free to ignore the law and hope women with babies won’t have the energy to fight back.

Obviously I told my employer that I’d see them in court but a colleague in the same position told me she just wanted to enjoy time with her baby and would look for a new job.

All so familiar!

I was exactly the same and had a total shock post kids - it’s the effect of the attitudes around you as much as the extra workload of the 2nd shift. I went from A team to B team and it was quite the eye opener. Young women just don’t have a clue (as I!) about the biases they will face and I think that makes them quite laissez-faire with Womens rights and letting them be eroded.
It makes me a bit sad to think that they’ll only realise when it’s too late amd they’ll be worse off - let’s hope they enjoy feeling pure and worthy now while it all lasts

Earlier this year, I was told by two people that there wasn't much inequality between men and women anymore so didn't need women's only anything.

Yes, they were both men. Both civil servants.

Their wives were remarkably silent on the matter.

Oh yes! A man told me that too. I almost lost an eyebrow irretrievably from raising it so high. He did have the grace to listen to a different perspective and modify his view (or at least pretend to)

Rules of misogyny 13 or 14 iirc… women have all the rights they need: the right to remain silent.

The medical school posts remind me of a scandal that came out when I was at school - St George's in London used a computer algorithm to filter which medical school applicants should get an interview. It removed points for being female (and even more for having a name that sounded non caucasian).

Hundreds of women and ethnic minority students didn't get interviewed over the course of the time it was in place. The School's defence was that they hadn't intended to be bias, they had just wanted to mirror the way their interviewing panel decided on suitability!

We welcome the coming of AI. Which won't be a bit like that.