The Marriage Bar
Many of our female ancestors lost their jobs when they got married. Dr Rosa Matheson looks at their centuries-long fight for equality
Why were so many of our female ancestors forced to give up their jobs when they got married?
The story of the marriage bar is something of a forgotten history, or rather ‘herstory’ because it only affected women, banning them from working as soon as they married. It was used by a great number of organisations, but mainly had an impact on white-collar workers.
The Post Office was the earliest to introduce the marriage bar. Women started working there in large numbers from 1870, most frequently as telephonists and telegraphists in segregated exchanges.
The Victorians demanded segregation of the sexes on the grounds of the women’s physical protection and their moral welfare.
Only six years later the Post Office introduced the first formal marriage bar. A 20-year international economic depression began following the financial crisis of 1873 and men were being laid off in large numbers, so it was thought better to dismiss married women to clear places for men.
In 1898, towards the end of the depression, the London County Council (LCC), which already had a large number of female staff such as cooks and cleaners, established a ‘female’ typist department. It was found that women were better suited than men to be ‘type-writers’ because of their lighter, nimble fingers and ability to sit still for hours, yet still the LCC required all female employees to resign upon marriage. This kept its costs lower. Young women were always paid less than men, so a constant turnover of young unmarried women provided cheap labour.
Uncivil Service
From 1892 the Civil Service began to introduce women into its various departments. In 1894 it also created a class of female ‘type-writers’ and introduced the marriage bar.
There were several arguments for the marriage bar. The main one was to keep jobs for the men. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the trade unions had fought hard for a ‘family wage’ that a man could support his wife and family on. Girls and women working, especially married women earning their own wage, undermined this argument.
It was also thought that a married woman could not possibly fulfil her work position competently, when she had a home and family to look after. This popular position was supported by many women, who thought that it was an unfair expectation of women and created and placed a ‘double-burden’ of work on them. In 1898, for example, the Glamorgan Free Press quoted the Rhondda School Board as saying “married ladies, especially those who have children, cannot devote the same energy to their school work as could a single lady”.
The idea that a married woman’s most important role was to look after her husband and bear children for him became more important after the two world wars, with the loss of many of Britain’s sons. The ‘marriage risk’ made employers reluctant to invest in training or developing female employees, which made it difficult for the many women who, for whatever reason, remained unmarried and needed paid employment and prospects for their working life.
The 1918 Education Act raised the school leaving age to 14 years, and made attendance at school compulsory for any child between the ages of 5 and 14, which meant girls could not now be taken out of school early. The 1919
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, meanwhile, made it illegal to disqualify anyone “by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function”. This gave women access to areas previously closed to them, but despite being banned in theory, the marriage bar continued to affect women in a variety of positions, including clerical workers in banks, insurance and railway companies, and councils; doctors; nurses; lawyers; accountants; and teachers.
In 1923 Mrs Price, a long-serving married teacher, challenged
Rhondda Urban District Council’s marriage bar in the high-profile court case Price vs Rhondda. Despite arguing that the bar was in breach of “the letter and spirit of the 1919 Act” her claim was overturned, and she and 59 other married women were dismissed.
Two years later another teacher, Mrs Short, in Dorset brought a similar challenge, which unlike the Rhondda case was backed by the National Union of Teachers. According to contemporary news reports, Poole Corporation claimed that “having the right to employ teachers, they had the right to dismiss them”, but Mr Justice Homer ruled that Mrs Short’s dismissal on the grounds of marriage was invalid and wrongful. However, his judgment was later overturned on appeal, on the same grounds as Price’s – that is, because Mrs Short “could not fulfil her responsibilities to both satisfactorily”.
In 1928 Manchester City Council’s Education Committee, which had introduced the bar in 1910, was forced to a vote by a campaign led by political activist and councillor Shena Simon. Simon moved a resolution that would rescind the practice of the marriage bar, and the motion was carried. Simon considered this her greatest achievement while in office. The MCC tried to reintroduce the bar in 1934, but the tide was slowly turning and the vote was not carried.
Birth Of A Movement
The BBC followed the establishment and introduced its own marriage bar in 1932, during the Great Depression – claimed to be the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialised world. That same year the Scotsman reported that “women were hiding their marriages rather than lose their job”. In November 1933 the Portsmouth Evening Post reported that “twenty-nine women’s organisations will combine in a mass attack upon those saying if all wives stayed home the unemployment problem would be solved”.
This movement led to the Campaign for the Right of Married Women to Earn, which was launched in 1934. This had some quick success when in 1935 the LCC removed its marriage bar for teachers and medical staff. The rationale was that women doctors and teachers did not undercut the wages of male earners, so were not a threat to male employment even in the current difficult times. The National Union of Women Teachers then issued a statement congratulating the LCC and demanding equal treatment from all councils.
The marriage bar was tested, appealed against and challenged by those it imposed on again and again, as well as by some trade unions; employers like the BBC that sought ways around the problem in an effort to keep experienced women on; and male campaigners such as MPs. The Second World War had driven more married women into the workplace, and many wanted – and needed – to stay. The position for the marriage bar was becoming untenable.
‘Despite being banned in 1919, the marriage bar continued to affect women in a variety of professions’
The Civil Service had always employed large numbers of women in many different posts, nationally and internationally, mainly in clerical positions or lower grades. Right from the start its employment policy was fraught with inequalities towards women. It was an extraordinary position for the Government to be in. As late as 1946, even while admitting that women had shown their worth during two wars, and knowing that the postwar country desperately needed employees, the Government dragged its feet, when other organisations like the BBC had discarded their bar.
Up For Debate
On 25 July 1946, at 11.23pm, the House of Commons began to debate the ‘Civil Service and the Marriage Bar’. The topic had been raised before, often as part of the Civil Service’s discussions of women’s pay and conditions. John Freeman, MP for Watford, put it to the desperately tired MPs that the situation was ridiculous. This quote from Hansard shows his incredulity: “We have the most extraordinary situation, therefore, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer tramping round the country, making appeals to women to stay in industry, giving them Income Tax reliefs to make it possible for them to do so, and then the Honorary Gentleman – his assistant – refusing to allow them to remain in the Civil Service. Here is a case of a Jekyll and Hyde Department, if I ever saw one.”
Jennie Lee, MP for Cannock, added: “We want the women of the country, as well as the men, to have the choice before them, of giving their energies entirely in the home or devoting themselves to work outside the home, or perhaps building up a happier home, by dividing their energies.”
The marriage bar had many ‘endings’ or abandonments over the years in different professions and places, as practicalities and need overcame established practice and prejudice. In 1946 the Civil Service finally acceded, but for other professions like the Armed Services, it remained a long time after.