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.

It was 1992 that polys became unis. I was there.

Marriage bars in teaching ended... at various points, depending on your LEA. They were mostly suspended during WW2, of course.

Marriage bars in other professions also ended at various points. I think the 1973 civil service ones were the last official ones, but of course, they continued through convention in many places afterwards- women were often expected to want to stop work, and were strongly encouraged to. Some banks asked new husbands to write a letter to confirm they were happy for the new wife to continue working there, into the 1980s.

The Equal Pay Act was passed before I was born, but I've never been able to take it for granted. My biggest payrise was 23%, after they did a pay audit on the department- I had questioned my salary a couple of years earlier, and just been told, "it's a stackable offence to discuss pay." And even when I've had evening up payrises, it's never been backdated, nor pension contributions, which are done on a percentage of pay. I've never had time out on maternity or for caring, but I'll still have less pension than my male peers.

This is bizarre. I went to uni in 1978, opened a bank account (Lloyds because they offered the best perks) as did all my fellow female students, no male signatures required.

Mid eighties I worked in retail and I vividly remember my female area manager turning to me as I was about to go on maternity leave and said " you do realise that if you want to come back we can send you to any store within a thiry mile radius" she knew I didnt drive and using public transport would have been a nightmare what with dropping off baby at a childminders on route, ironically I worked for Mothercare.
I remember communial changing rooms being around in the late seventies, early eighties, I did my best to avoid them.
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Well, it may have been at the discretion of the manager of that particular branch. It happens and happened, so won't necessarily have been the same for everyone, that's the point.

If your bank was in a student town, they probably saw the advantage in catering to their female student market! But not everyone would have.

I used to go shopping for fun but never came across a communal changing room that was mixed sex.

Biba had a communal one with no separate curtained off cubicles for example, but was not mixed sex. It was embarrassing and unprivate enough as same sex.

It was mortgages women couldn’t get.

Which shops were they at? I do not recall any.

@ScrollingLeaves the communal changing rooms weren't mixed sex.

Thank you, that explains it.

I thought people were meaning that they were.

It's frightening how quickly historical amnesia sets in in society. All this stuff is within living memory for some of us. Do they teach the history of women's rights in schools at all? (Other than getting the vote).

On marriage, husband and wife were one person and that person was the man.

This is exactly what Pete Hegseth’s pastor wishes to happen again. With voting done by the head of the household ie the husband. It’s frightening how women’s rights are still contingent on the good will of men.

Agree! I had my own bank account from 1982, with no male input.

I remember communal changing rooms in Topshop in the early '00s. There was a time that a woman came in to change and was embaressed about her underwear for some reason. In a way it was a bit easier because you didn't have to wait, but I also guess it made shop lifting easier as well.

To be fair, the equality act replaced several other acts including the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 - which was the tool that really helped women require companies to update their policies and practices towards equal treatment in the 80s, 90s and 00s.

Some of the sexism I remember form the 80s

• At my school, to do Elements of Engineering Design O'level, girls had to give a reason that the teacher found acceptable. Boys did not. At a school near us, girls girls were not allowed to do any woodwork and metal work.
• When I joined Brownies, we weren't allowed to go camping, but the boys in cubs did.
• My mum worked for a firm that let women leave 5 mins early because they were required to wear makeup and men were not so this was supposed to compensate for the time.
• Despite the Sex Discrimination Act, women were not allowed down mines or on offshore rigs. The law didn't change on that until the late 80s
• The local working men's club did not allow female membership and only let women in when signed in by a member. It was the main place Labour Party business was conducted until at least the 80s.
• Rape in marriage was legal until the early 90s.
• Single mothers frequently had to hide that they had kids from their employers if they worked anywhere that considered it had to uphold a "moral" front as it was seen as immoral and they could be fired. This was a common enough issue that featured on an episode of Grange Hill. I believe a few tribunal cases using the sex discrimination act eventually put paid to that practice.
• To get an abortion you needed the sign off from two doctors and they did turn women down, even at early stages if they didn't think the reasons given were sound enough. One of the consultants that had to sign off on most of the abortions at Leeds General was known to be particularly reluctant (and said to be a member of LIFE, though that may have been university hyperbole).

Also some specific roles in the civil service until later than that in England. My mum had to resign her role in 1977 when she married as it was a particular post open to single women only (it involved placements and you weren’t considered free to be placed in a new location if you were married).

On other threads, I've been told I'm 'mistaken' about having been paid less than male colleagues, as the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1970 when I was 15.

It didn't come into force until the end of 1975. And was widely disregarded for a good five years after that. Underpaid women are not well placed to raise legal challenges against employers! It's the reason I encouraged union membership: unions were, and are, depressingly sexist but they'd get off their backsides for the opportunity to aggravate an employer.

Jersey still has no equal pay legislation, although it's supposedly covered by the Discrimination Law (Jersey) 2013. A whole thirteen years ago!

Jersey finally gave married women the legal right to independent taxation in 2023, lagging behind the UK, where wives fully attained this right in 1990, one year before marital rape became legally recognised.

The taxation change had been trailing along piecemeal since 1978 but, until 1990, the underlying principle was that a married woman’s income was part of her husband’s income. In fact, in the Income Tax Act 1918, married women were categorised as incapacitated persons, alongside infants and the insane. This reference to married women was not removed until 1950.

The principle that married women's earnings belonged to their husbands lay behind the difficulties wives faced in getting mortgages, loans, credit cards and hire purchase on their own accounts. They weren't deemed capable of making financial commitments, as their husbands were legally responsible for all the family money.

Although this theoretically applied only to wives, most people men simply read this as women so these obstacles severely hampered single, separated, divorced and widowed women. It was a serious problem for single mothers, who were often denied tenancies as well as loans and mortgages.

Communal changing rooms were usual in “fashion shops” like Dorothy Perkins, Richard Shops and so on. Sometimes there were tiny curtained cubicles where you changed then you came out into the main room with mirrors. A very sociable space if you liked that sort of thing! Obviously, communal was single sex. A woman only space.

Women couldn’t get credit without a man countersigning until 1974. The police routinely returned women to their abusive husbands.

I agree. OP thanks for sharing this. How incredibly stark those few words are, and so recent.

And I’ll throw in Chelsea Girl in Manchester in the seventies was a scene packed full of women and girls, it was rammed, you had to find a space, clothes were everywhere! Ahhh Saturday shopping with my best pal as a teenager.

When my colleague told the then Headteacher that she was pregnant with her second child, the head told her that they assumed that they’d be giving up work now she was going to have 2 children and was shocked when my colleague said she was planning on coming back to work after her second maternity leave.

This was in 2008.

You don’t recall Mothercare? Are you in the UK? They were a huge high street chain that sold baby equipment, baby clothes, young kids clothes and maternity clothes.

Oops: edited to add I think you meant which stores had communal changing and not which had a Mothercare

Please feel free to ignore!

It was old fashioned by then, but still happened at some pubs in the 80s, for women to only be served half pints and not allowed pints.

When I was at school [mid 70's] we had a careers teacher who made it clear that he thought higher education was wasted on girls. He advised us to leave at 16 to do a secretarial course at the local college. Fortunately I had parents who encouraged my interest in sciences as the school [large mixed comp] did not. I was the only girl in the year to do biology chemistry and physics.

Your first bullet pin t reminds me of my own experience (mid-80s) choosing O grade options. “We can’t run Engineering Science this year, there are only three students signed up and one of them’s a girl!!”

it is really sobering to realise how recent women’s rights have been recognised. This blog, focussed on constitutional rights, is quite a helpful summary. https://consoc.org.uk/international-womens-day/