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.

Its 2026. Yet an All Female crew is still newsworthy...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy2j2334nvo

Do you remember when Angela Ripon became the first regular and established female news reader...... all the the fuss, and the doubts about whether she would have enough authority? And still at that time ( early 1970s), it was very rare to have any female expert ( outside of nursing or teaching) as a voice of authority on TV at all.

There certainly were communal changing rooms in Miss Selfridge in the days past.

A cousin of my DM who married in the 30s /40s? Anyway she had to wear her wedding ring round her neck ,as women were not allowed to work once marriied!

I remember the communal changing rooms in Miss Selfridge in the 70s and 80s. Just a big communal space where you tried to find a quiet corner.

My mum was allowed to keep her job as a teacher when she married (massive teacher shortage) but when I was born and she returned early (Christmas holidays plus two weeks) because they told her they desperately needed her, they demoted her from deputy head to teacher because they told her they didn’t think she would cope with a demanding job and a new baby. 1960s.

Of course there were communal changing rooms. I detested them! Both in clothes shops and in the school swimming pool. But at least there you could get changed under a towel. I am surprised anyone is surprised at the content of the letter. It’s a lifetime ago. For comparison 65 years before that letter Queen Victoria had been dead less than a year.

The rules were outrageous by today's standards. My late mum worked for the Admiralty during WWII. She was awarded an OBE for services to nation, then was required to resign in 1947 because she married.

Her services to the nation were valued at zero when it came down to it.

Yes, we need to fight every inch to prevent the erosion of women's rights.

DMum was let go for being pg with elder sibling - her very conservative employer thought they were being progressive as previously they terminated women's employment upon marriage - and they waited couple of years till she was pg.

Legal protection didn't come in till year or two later to preventing it but got told on here by couple of posters this couldn't have happened in UK in early 70s.

Ironcially both Dsis and I have had huge employment issue when pg and ended up managed out or restructured out and found it easier to just move on.

I remember being sat in 90s secondary classroom when RE teacher said in her lifetime she couldn't get a bank or mortage as a lone female without a male cosigning on account.

I remember art of getting changed under towels being taught by Dmum because in 80s communal changing rooms weren't uncommon.

I only remember once finding them in a shop as teen in 90s and disliking it enough to not bother trying on.

It’s a bit grim but ultimately when doing something new or different the path will always be harder to carve out. People will object and try to obstruct. It’s why I’ve always thought that the trans movement will fail - if you expect everyone to automatically provide a safe space for you, youll wait a long long time!

what a great story!
yes it’s newsworthy because the long tail on training still makes it unusual - and definitely a special occasion rather than a regular everyday thing
ive had 1 all female team in 30 years and tgat was about 20 years ago… I live in hope to experience it again 😊

The first female BBC newsreader was Nan Winton in 1960 but after a short lived experiment she was dropped & it wasn't until fifteen years later that Angela Rippon became a regular newsreader.

www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/june/first-female-newsreader-in-vision

My father-in-law ran a company with about three (male) employees, and they had a topless calendar. This was in the 1980s/90s. They had two toilets, both single-room and ostensibly unisex, but they advised me to only use the one on the top floor when visiting. Eventually I discovered why. The other toilet had a big pile of well-used porn mags.

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

Yes, this in spades.

I am 75. Some examples - the FE college I was studying at in 1969 finally allowed female students to wear smart trousers (but not jeans). The reason being that those students on secretarial courses would be going into offices and trousers wouldn't be allowed there. But they did realise times were changing.

I went to an all girls grammar school. At O level we all had to take Biology, but Physics with Chemistry was one O level. Needless to say precious few took either subject at A level having only done half the amount of work necessary for A level. No one ever applied for medical school.

The 11+ pass rate was higher for girls, so they rigged the results to let the boys in. Some towns had more provision for boys grammar schools than girls. The 1975 legislation put paid to that. (Plus changing times with regards to grammar schools.)

Girls got pushed into going to Teacher training college - at the time you only needed five O levels to get a non graduate teaching certificate. When qualified a non graduate was paid less and could never get to the top of the scale. Hence a number of my friends ended up doing OU degrees.

My widowed aunt having to get my father to act as a guarantor for her mortage in the 1960s, despite the fact that she had a good pensionable civil service post.

We could go on, and on.

We fought hard for our rights.

@Words ' I am surprised anyone is surprised at the content of the letter. It’s a lifetime ago.'

What surprised me was the condition of employment set out in the final paragraph, which seems to say if they ever get an application for her job from a man, they'll give him her job & sack her. I'd never come across this before. Has anyone? It goes beyond what I knew about women's history & rights.

If I remember correctly, it was Abbey National? This was in rural Wales, in the nearest big town, one of only two banks available. Yes, it was a male bank manager, no I clearly did not know my rights, and no my dad was not best pleased at having to be dragged down to the bank. Gave the manager an earful, but clearly also did not know what my rights were either! So we were both irritated, but neither of us complained. The next bank I went to some years later gave me no trouble, so I was clearly very unlucky.

Students, I believe, had an easier time getting bank accounts.

My mother-in-law, born 1917, got a job with the Post Office Savings Bank* when she left school. I think this would be classed as a Civil Service job. She worked there for about 20 years. When she got married, late in life for the times, she had to leave. She got a job in the City for a while but left that too when pregnant with my husband. Many years later the Civil Service did a recruitment campaign aimed specifically at women like her who had worked there until marriage/children, to encourage them to come back. So she did, working part-time until she reached retirement age.

My Mum, born in 1932, also went into the Civil Service when she left school, but was able to leave after a short time to go to teacher training college. The baby boom after the war led to a huge shortage of teachers and a big recruitment drive. She couldn't have given up work without a grant and having the fees paid by the council or government, as her family had no money to support her. She was able to carry on working after she married, but gave up when pregnant with me. I'm not sure whether she was forced to or whether it was just obvious that there was no practical way for her to carry on once I arrived. We weren't living near any family and there were no day nurseries in small towns in Central Scotland at that time. I've no idea how easy it would have been to find a childminder and how much it would have cost.

I don't know for sure but I wouldn't be surprised if both MIL and Mum took advantage of something a lot of women did, namely to draw out their pension contributions when they left. Obviously money was going to be very tight once they weren't working, but this is one reason many older women have such poor pension provision - no entitlement left from their first few years of work.

Of course there was also the Married Women's NI rate, which was less than the standard rate because the assumption was that the married women could rely on their husbands to look after them so didn't need their full entitlement to the state pension and other benefits. Lots of women chose to pay that, again because money was tight, and regretted it later.

*National Savings and Investments now

I can remember:

1982: a judge telling a rape victim she was guilty of contributory negligence because of the clothes she'd been wearing

1984: Being told I needed to wear make up to work as a waitress. And smile more, obviously.

1986: women weren't allowed to wear trousers to work in many offices. I wrote to the local paper arguing with some old fucker who had said it was a disgrace when women wore trousers to work

1990: women started being taxed independently of their husbands, previously husbands had to complete the tax returns

1991: rape in marriage was made illegal - I remember the day

2003: I was asked at an interview, at 7.30am in The City of London, what I was going to do about childcare. I asked whether any of the men interviewed were asked the same and not surprisingly didn't get an answer to my email

2017 The Sun got rid of page 3. Until then they still had topless models on page 3, many of them very young, 16 or 17

It really was a different, much worse time. These rights were hard won.

I have a letter dated 1907 addressed to my great grandmother from the post office terminating her services due to her upcoming marriage.

Some time between 1981 and 1984 several women I knew applied for a professional job in a minor corner of the Irish Civil Service. One of the interviewers asked a single woman did she want the job so that she could marry a [member of that profession] and asked a married woman why did she need the job, could her husband not 'keep her' (financially).

I am glad to report that he never got to interview applicants for a public sector job again. And a woman was appointed.

Amusingly, it was generally known that his own mid 70s promotion to another post, when he held the job being interviewed for, had been assisted by his marrying the then senior manager's daughter.

Remembered another shocking moment from the 1970s. We were watching a TV game show. All I can remember about is that the contestants were given a real life problem and asked what their solution to it would be. I think there was a panel of celebs rating the responses. Anyway, one man who had a school age son and a school age daughter was asked if he had enough money to send one of them to private school but not the other what he would do. Without missing a beat, he said he would send his son as a good education was more important for boys because they would be working all their lives whereas a girl would probably get married soon after leaving school and wouldn't have a career. I'm pleased to report some audience members booed. I was in my teens and I was stunned by what he said.

What happened in 1991 was that the presumption of a wife's "irrevocable consent" to sexual intercourse was deleted. This meant a wife's non-consent became legally possible. In a case known as R v R, the House of Lords ruled that a husband could be guilty of raping his wife, saying a rapist remains a rapist subject to the criminal law, irrespective of his relationship with his victim.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 abolished the Morgan rule, which permitted a defence of "honest belief" in consent. This defence supported rapist partners who claimed to believe the victim wanted sex because she ran him a bath or whatever - it was subjective.

"Reasonable belief" is an objective test. So the legal acknowledgement of marital rape was a two-step process: first removing the wife's duty of sex, then the husband's belief in his right to it.

The Royal Wedding.
Closeup of Princess Diana inside the coach in her white dress and veil, looking frightened.
The male commentator murmuring "Gift-wrapped".

Talking about work pensions, not only did women take out the money from their pension - I did with one of mine before I had a career break, many schemes did not admit women in the first place.

Being allowed access to the pension scheme was one reason I joined the civil service. Another rule had been that if you left for some reason, you could only re-enter at the clerical officer grade. Someone took this to a tribunal on the grounds of indirect discrimination because it affected women taking career breaks more than men. My cousin was caught out by this rule. By the time I returned to work , this decision had been overturned and I was able to join at the next grade up.

Or I should have said the highest grade a returner could enter at was Clerical officer. There were clerical assistants below this, which of course you could apply for.

For many women this was still a better option that the other jobs out there.