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.

This happened to me in a pub in rural Clare, Ireland in 1992, so very clearly it was possible to encounter these situations long after they were supposed to have stopped.

Also worth noting that it was subtly applied. A few of us were on holiday together and each time one went to the bar and ordered e.g three Archers peach schnapps and lemonade (I did say it was the 90s) and a pint of Guinness, the Guinness would be a half pint. It took a few rounds before we realised it wasn't a mistake.

I got my first bank account as a student in 1977, but I think I went straight from registration and getting my Id card to the on-campus branch (queuing up with all the other students doing the same thing) so although I didn't have to have my father's 'permission' the bank did have a way to track me and my family down if I tried any funny business.

Back then bank branch decisions were much more dependent of the manager's judgement than they are now, and students generally looked like potential good customers.

I got sacked for being pregnant. Not said in as many words, but couldn't have been clearer.

First time I went to the bank for a loan, bank manager insisted on contacting my father.

Similar bank situation when I was married - all the assumptions was that he must be the main breadwinner, even though he wasn't.

My life has seen countless examples of how women are disadvantaged at every turn and that its always the patriarchy who get to dictate to us.

I think the current younger generation have very little idea of how hard we have had to fight for the most basic rights.

In 2000 at 30 years old, I was interviewed for a position with one of the 'Big Four' professional and accounting services companies in the City. I had the experience and qualifications. The interview panel of three, 2 men and 1 women all going well and feeling confident. Then the question that threw me "Have you got any plans to get pregnant because we need to know this now!". It was the fucking woman who was a similar age to me. She was the HR manager. At the time I was going through fertility issues, had had a miscarriage the previous year and found it difficult talking about it with family let alone strangers. I went bright red and said the standard no, I'm focussing on my career. I got the job and took it. Four year later I conceived and had our first child. I took a years maternity but ended up leaving as got pregnant unexpectedly very quickly with my second child. All three who had interviewed me had all left the company by then but I still had pangs of guilt that I had let them down. Ridiculous really.

2010 started applying for roles in Education after a career break and in an interview was asked what support network I had in place to look after the children in the event of illness.

My husband has never been asked in his working career either of these questions.

A woman could still be told in the 1960s that her husband had to consent to her having a hysterectomy. I believe this persisted in some places into the 1970s and may still happen in parts of America.

In the 1970s a graduate friend was told at interview that they didnt normally employ women, she was not offered a job.

Also in the 1970s women told they could only have a drink in the lounge bar, not the public bar.

When the pill started becoming available you had to be engaged and take your fiancé with you to get it.

Even after it became illegal women would still be asked if they were married/ how they would manage childcare.

Marital rape only became illegal in 2003.

My bank once rang about a problem with my account and when I was not available they told my husband about it. This was something like 10 years ago and I was furious.

I went to uni in 1972 and one of the first things we all had to do was go and open bank accounts. We could all get overdrafts as well. (The other thing we had to do was get a chest x-ray - TB ??). We could also get the pill as long as we were in a ‘long term relationship’
I got a mortgage in 1982 - the only issue was getting a mortgage that was no more than 3 times your salary and they were absolutely strict on that. I had to wait until I got a pay rise.

The last Mother and baby home in Ireland was closed in 1998. I'm 45 and there will be women the same age as me in Ireland who were sent to these places. This always shocks me.

Women have only been able to vote in the UK for a little over 100 years. There are people alive who are older than this!

Young women have to realise how recently women's rights have been a thing and how easily they can be taken away.

We should never underestimate the sheer ferocity of men’s determination to keep women down and exclude us. It’s still happening now, albeit in different ways.

💯

I think the current younger generation have very little idea of how hard we have had to fight for the most basic rights.

That is so well put, thank you.

Excellent post, I'm sure this is what's happening.

In the mid 1980s I was a graduate trainee at a Big Eight firm of chartered accountants. One of the reasons I picked that firm (I had a few offers to consider) was because their intake was about 50 50 male female, which was unusual. When I started I was fairly ambitious to do well and perhaps become a partner but I soon realised that (a) I wasn't very good at accountancy, (b) I didn't enjoy it much and (c) even if I had been a terrific accountant and loved the work, and had been sufficiently tough to cope with the long hours and the internal politics, the job would not have been compatible with what I wanted more than anything (and always had), which was to have children. I think the moment I gave up on my vague partnership ideas was when I was told about a senior manager who had recently divorced. Her husband had immediately married again and successfully applied for their children to live with him because his new wife didn't work and could look after the children, whereas his ex-wife was working long hours and relying heavily on paid childcare. Of course the ex was himself working full time.

I'm not sure when it was but the company my Dad worked for, which doesn't exist any more, apparently lives on as a footnote in UK employment history because some female employees successfully won the right to wear trousers to work, which had been banned. It was a retail business and the shop assistants sometimes had to stand on ladders to put stock in the high shelves. It was accepted that it was unreasonable for them to do this wearing skirts while there were male customers standing nearby.

Marital rape only became illegal in 2003.
1991 in England and Wales.

In those days banks wanted to get student customers because fewer people shopped around & changed banks, so if your free gift enticed a student to open an account with you, you'd got a customer for life.

It didn't work in my case, as the bank I chose messed up two important transactions so I changed banks quite early on.

Thanks to @JohnofWessex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Drummond

I can remember (Northern Ireland, mid 1990s) being asked whether I was going to continue working when I got married. I struggled to understand the question and thought people were joking at first, but they weren't.

I went to an all girls school so thankfully I could study science without comment - lots of us did.

i had no problem getting a bank account going to uni because in the 80s the big banks positively chased students for their grant cheques. However at the end of my final year I had more weeks than money so I went to an interview with the bank manager armed with my job offer letter, asking for a £50 overdraft to see me past finals and to my job. He sketched out a budget for me and said he thought I needed more and gave me an overdraft of £250! I didn’t need that much, but took it anyway. I needed some suitable clothes for work so I think I ran up to £100 OD in the end. Paid it off with my first pay packet.

i also had an interview in about 1991-2 for a promotion where the lead interviewer asked about my plans to get married and have babies. To be fair the other interviewer did look embarrassed at the questioning but didn’t stop it. I did of course say all the usual things about focusing on my career. All the older women in the department were outraged when I told them. Nothing was ever said to me, but he never asked those questions again (we were a gossipy place!). Several of those outraged women were union reps so I imagine some Quiet Words were spoken.

In 1996 there was a topless calendar displayed on the office wall of my first professional job. I was never sure if this was because it was always what they’d done and hadnt thought about it or whether it was done as an act of territorial aggression against us female graduates.

In the 30 years since I’d say that the ladies toilets out in the field (theoretically locked) have been left dirty around 90% of the time. I just assume it was me personally that they didn’t like but apparently this sort of dirty protest is a “thing”.

Just as there are currently men on X trying to say that there were never communal, female-only changing rooms & that women & girls don't shop for clothes together & communicate while trying things on (& therefore it doesn't matter if there are no female changing rooms), one of the funniest things I read was a guy saying that he didn't believe any woman's drink was ever spiked, because HE drinks in pubs & clubs a lot & HIS drinks are never spiked.

The inability to accept that other people's lives & experiences are not identical to one's own explains a lot, I think.

Ooh if you’re interested in this then Nina Baker’s history is also worth a look:

www.rmg.co.uk/stories/ocean/i-want-go-sea-do-you-think-might-be-possible-nina-baker-her-own-words

The lack of intellectual curiosity is horrifying - to bother putting out a comment like that based on such idiocy without any self awareness of how ridiculous that is. Im quite gobsmacked

That's disgusting - and pathetic.

Wrt the topless calendar, someone put one up in my first shared office. Nobody quite knew what to do, but I was the last to leave that day & I felt so angry that I ripped it down & threw it in the bin. Brilliantly, the next day the guy who put it up thought management must've done it, so he didn't replace it.

Example even on this thread- women not believing other women’s experiences because they did not have that problem:

I find that hard to believe. I was born in 1960. I opened my first bank account in 1976, no signatures required, I just wanted one

It was a few years ago now that the Paddle Steamer Waverley called at a pier with a Woman officer on the Bridge, a Woman on the wheel and a Woman on the engine controls.

Never thought I would see it when I was at school but its happened.

I remember communal changing rooms and shopping on a Saturday afternoon with friends.

We weren't allowed to wear trousers in my first job in 1993. We had to ask a female partner (think it was about 1995) when we wanted to. She allowed it as long as it was a trouser suit.

My exMIL stopped work (as a secretary) when she got married (late 60s).