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.

I just watched that. Isn’t it shocking!

And the film maker said he’d been at Hendon Police Training College and heard them being told that 60% of women alleging rape were lying.

Was it in Yorkshire? There is a well known furniture maker that carves a mouse into each piece. Also has made a lot of things for Cathedrals, country houses and schools etc.

@ Nogimachi · Today 21:02
@Thatsabitastonshing · Yesterday 23:59
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.
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Agree, I opened my bank account aged 19 at uni by myself with no guarantees needed.

Are you sure you didn't have to show your University Id? Because that unique identifier, connected to a home address, birth date etc was a guarantee in itself.

I remember the rape laws coming in and a few years later,an (ex) male friend (the friend of my friends then boyfriend) was genuinely confused as 'its not rape if shes your wife'

He couldn't wrap his tiny brain around something called 'consent' and if she says 'no' it means 'no'

It doesn't matter if your married or not-no amount of explaining marriage vows mean nothing if she says 'no' made it sink in-he just kept saying 'but shes my wife so it cant be rape'

When my friend married the boyfriend he mentioned (on their wedding day) that the boyfriend 'can have it whenever you like' and acted shocked when he was told thats not how it works

This was 2000/1 and hes now married with two (teen) dds-i often wonder if he finally got his head around it or if he thinks sex with his wife doesn't matter if shes up for it or not,or if he thinks the same about his dds when/if they get married

He's not the only one out there that thinks hes owns womens bodies

Yes.

Robert Thompson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Thompson_(designer)

This is so interesting, thank you. My mum was a research chemist and gave up work when my dad found a new job after being made redundant and they had to move house for it. This was right at the beginning of the 70s. She said it was expected that you would give up work when you became pregnant anyway and it simply wouldn’t have occurred to her to do otherwise - there were no nurseries and the only nannies were Norton Nannies who were fantastically expensive and for the aristocracy.

Fully agree.

I remember opening a bank account in 1976 post O'Levels. I'd got a summer job at M&S and they paid into a bank account. I walked into Lloyds Bank in the village (family was Barclays) because I liked the horse! Just asked to open one, probably showed them my NI number or building society book but I'm not sure if even that was necessary I certainly didn't need to show my passport. They asked how I wanted my name printed on the cheque book: Miss J Smith or J Smith. I went for the latter until my handbag was stolen in the mid 80s and a bloke cashed a cheque at the counter - J Smith could have been male or female. Ever since it's been printed as J̌ane Smith. Obvs not my real name.

Think I got a cheque guarantee card when I went to uni and switched to a student account - I got a credit card too. So the pp may have a point but I definitely had no issues opening a bank account aged 16.

I believe I am right in saying that in the US tax returns are still done by household, not individually. This was certainly the case about 6 years ago as I remember a board member at my former company (one of America’s largest so this woman will have been paid upwards of 500K a year, probably a lot more) talking about how her husband would find out how much she had spent at one of their large department stores.

I had cousins who went to work in banks - late 70s/ early 80s. There was a tradition in one of the banks to give a 'dowry' to any female member of staff getting married. They stopped the tradition when a man requested his 'dowry' as he was getting married, quoting the 1974 Equal pay act. Caused quite a stir in the Daily Mail.

My mum came with me to open a bank account when I was 16/17, so 1977 or so. They weren't keen without my Dad's signature but my Mum just kept talking at them until they gave in. Still wouldn't let me have a bank card a few years later so I changed banks.

@DPotter I definitely went to the bank on my own. I had to meet wiyh the actual bank manager but there was no fuss at all.

My mother had to give up her permanent teaching post in the 1950s when she got married.
Married women were only allowed to do relief or temporary jobs.

I always remember seeing her photo in the local paper captioned as Mrs Andrew Thomson like she didn't have a name of her own.

My Maternal Grandfather was a Reckitts Rep and it was assumed that on leaving school my mother would simply help her mother 'keep house'

Then WW2 broke out and that was the end of that idea

After WW2 she and her best friend travelled round Europe getting as far as Morocco by train

A retired colleague of mine who got engaged in the early 1980’s remembers having to remove her ring for a secretarial job interview. She said she wouldn’t have got the job otherwise.

I opened my account, aged 18, after 6th form & before A level results in anticipation of university and got a student account. Just had my NI number and birth certificate.

This is so bizarre. The Mrs V Morgan in this letter is my Grandma! Some of you may be happy to hear that she was never replaced by a man. She was still a postie in the 80’s, until she retired and loved her job.

Brilliant!

Oh wow! I wonder what she thought of that note at the time?
Very glad she didn’t get usurped!

Amazing!

Don’t forget that, although women were allowed to attend lectures at Oxford University from 1873, they weren’t awarded actual university degrees until 1920. Male undergraduates protested against their presence. Women also had to be chaperoned much if the time and males were not allowed in women’s colleges, even their own fathers and brothersz

Cambridge University only allowed women to get university degrees in 1948!!

I haven't seen one in a shop for decades.
Of course they still exist in gyms etc.

A friend (widow) got remarried a few years back. She had been living with her partner for several years before because if she married him she would lose her pension from her former husband's employer.

Even when women were allowed to join pension schemes benefits were not equal. Employers were ordered to equalize benefits for men and women from May 17, 1990. Prior to this, many private and public sector schemes only provided survivor pensions for widows, not widowers.

Blimey that's a stretch. I'm a Waspi woman, I worked in well paying roles on equal pay with men with my own bank account, pensions, etc all my working life.

My mother was a trainee SRN nurse in the early 1950s. She was forced to resign when she got engaged to marry.