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.

Lots of pubs in Central London admitted women - after being shamed and taken to court for excluding us - in the 1980s. But we weren't allowed to order, had to get a man to do it for us.

I was entertaining clients. It was hugely embarrassing and I did kick up a stink a few times.

I visited a friend's home in a town near Newcastle in the mid 80s and was told that they were going to the local Working Men's Club on Sunday morning but I couldn't come, as women weren't allowed in. I could stay at home and help his mum cook the Sunday lunch.
Luckily there was a change of plan!

So perhaps the current situation with the Supreme Court ruling isn't so unusual, after all, i.e. compliance with laws about women's (and other groups') rights tends to be patchy for a long time afterwards, and you can have very different experiences depending on whom you are dealing with?

So some keep up with current law and take compliance seriously, whether they personally approve or not.

Some may be vague about the actual law but believe in the rights morally, so end up doing the legal thing more or less by accident.

Some don't bother about the law till either they are sued or they see somebody else being expensively sued, and then they comply.

Some do their damnedest to avoid obeying the law, using every trick in the book.

I had the same problem with Anglian, too. I started off patiently explaining that it was my flat, my money and my refurb. Guy insisted on a non-existent husband.

I wrote to head office telling them theirs had been the best quote, but I went with a supplier who'd accept a female client. 2002.

Had a lot more trouble than you with mortgages, though. XH1 and I couldn't get a joint mortgage in the North-East, 1980. We moved to London, where it was easy. Both salaries counted, same multiplier (I earned more than him).

But 18 years later, also in London, XH2 and I were trying to complete on our purchase and the building society wouldn't release the funds on my say! It wasn't that they needed to speak to us both, they insisted on him signing off the transfer. He was out of the country with no phone signal and we nearly lost the flat thanks to some stupid cow at Abbey National.

My first political action, in 1974, was leading a strike at the factory where I worked because there was no women's toilet.

That seems really late to me - I got a bank account and a credit card in 1989, no make signature required.

Yes I agree with this. Definitely remember some - I think Monsoon and Topshop that I definitely went in to in the very late 90s / early 2000s!

That's weird. I went into a pub with my parents in c.1966/7 (I was 16 or so) and regularly went to the local pub near my hall in 1968/9. Also, our tutorial group met in the same pub - a 'social' gathering. Women were allowed into pubs - indeed, in the early part of the twentieth century husband and wife were likely to go to the pub together on either a Friday or a Saturday night (depending whether they worked on Saturday or not). In the 50s my aunt would go to her local pub with my uncle. Sunday lunchtime tended to be all male, mainly because wives were at home cooking Sunday lunch. Where did your DM's boyfriend go to university?

Top Shop and River Island had communal changing rooms - rather dingy as I remember!

My dm, who left her grammar school in the early 1950s, often tells of her “exit interview” with her headteacher. Dm was full of ideas for her career. Her headteacher said at the end “I expect you’ll get married”!! My dm went on to have a career in publishing and didn’t get married for another 10 years.

This is where I urge people who have not read or come across Can Any Mother Help Me? which has many first hand accounts of 20th Century women who lived in the time of the marriage bar.

Glasgow.

Very late. I had my own bank account in 1968. I don't remember needing a guarantor - though since I was a minor possibly my father (my mother would not have qualified as a guarantor) may have needed to sign something. I was 18 and temping before going up to university. I arranged the bank account myself.

Apparently it was 1982 when pubs were no longer allowed to refuse to serve women.
www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2012/nov/15/el-vino-women-ban-fleet-street-1982

At my first job interview at 16, in 1973, I was asked about when I was likely to get married and have children...it was a civil service job.

The marriage bar was very real and affected all women, professional or in ordinary office jobs, shops etc. I remember my teacher leaving when she got married - mind, she married a vicar which is a job in itself! Married women began to be retained as teachers in the 50s when the marriage bar was lifted. By the 60s many teachers were married women.

It shows how fragile women's rights are, how bottom of the pile we are, this letter only 65 years ago. Equality Act only 16 years ago and already being attacked by men.

Also nearby. It's bonkers by modern standards. (Of course, that head post office on Claypath is now flats)

I think that it was still expected for women to give up work in many "acceptable" professions, around that time, in the event that they married.

I was married when I entered the civil service. I just took an exam. I don't remember being asked if I intended to have children, but it did come up when I decided to train as a teacher - neither job then had marriage bars, c.1972/4.

I was just coming on to comment about Miss Selfridge's communal changing room in about '97 that was very open plan

That probably explains all. I was in London and then Staffordshire.

My first encounter with a new-style TiM was in the communal changing at Miss Selfridge in the West End. It must've been 1999 or 2000. It was a big room and a couple of women finished, leaving just him and me.

He was prancing around demanding my attention all the time, being 'sexy'. Very annoying, rather creepy and intimidating. I eventually told him I was on limited time and asked him to leave me alone to finish trying on my stuff - and he took umbrage. Got quite angry, so I got dressed in my own clothes and left the rest there, not buying anything.

He shocked me a bit, and I was shocked again when I tried telling the staff someone was being intrusive and belligerent. They told me off, putting me entirely in the wrong. I felt I was speaking a different language - I now know I was, in a way! I'd unknowingly bumped into early genderism. I was nearly crying when I left.

At the time, I had loads of 'trans' friends. None of them were like this, it was incredibly weird. I used to like communal changing rooms, all the women would help each other with the outfits and give feedback on choices. When I saw this bloke in Miss Selfridge, I found it odd but assumed he'd be sharing the vibe. Wrong!

I don't find it hard to believe actually. Are you really suggesting the poster is lying?

Although for many of us, there generally weren't problems from the mid-late 80s onwards (I got my first student bank account in 1989 I think, no problems at all), you've got to remember that some of the most senior people (men) working in banks then would've been old school.If it's at the discretion of the bank manager (which it often was) and he was a old fashioned old git, I can see that that still might've been happening in some branches. There were some old school tossers who were really stubborn about it and thought it asserted their 'authority' over women and their 'conservative values'. I remember, for instance, in 1988/89, that our new deputy headmaster at my school when i was in 6th form insisted that none of the female teachers should be allowed to wear trousers!

Quite incredible to think of now, but also common in a lot of workplaces then.

It sounds like you were luckier than most women, certainly in the 60s. My working class and working mum, for sure, always needed my dad's signature for stuff, and she ws married at 19. Before that, it was her father.

End of the 80s.

Violinist 64, I was grammar school educated, turned 18 in 1982, and the careers thought suitable were teaching, nursing or office work. Only 4 girls out of our cohort went to university. I was told off for wearing trousers in thd office in 1984. I applied for a credit card in 1986 and was asked if my husband was aware I wanted a credit card. I wasn't married 😁

Mm, I went in 1989 and the figure WAS 10% going onto university specifically. So no, they haven't got it wrong at all, and it isn't the wrong decade.

The polys didn't become universities for at least a couple of years after that, it was in my final year I think, which would've been 1992. I was at Sussex Uni, there was Brighton poly in the town (which then became Brighton University), but there was definitely a bit of hoo-ha about the changeover.

When I started work back in the late 70's , couldn't go for a drink after work unless had a male with us, unless the pub had a lounge

1979 I was the best Pool player in my store - yet I wasnt allowed on the team - because I was female

Same year I wanted a hifi on credit from woolies, even though I had wage slips proving income, even though I was staff, I still had to get a guarantor