Dan Snow's History Hit - The End of Sex Disqualification?

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

The First World War saw unprecedented numbers of women enter the workplace and help pave the way for women to be given greater rights and responsibilities in their careers, or did it? The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was, on paper, a social revolution opening the doors to professions that previously women had been barred by law from entering. The reality was very different though and instead of being treated as equals they continued to experience discrimination and barriers to pursuing the careers they wanted and were qualified for. In this episode of the podcast, Dan is joined by Jane Robinson author of Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders to discuss some of the fascinating stories of the female pioneers trying to live, work and establish themselves in careers that had traditionally been closed to them.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm talking to Jane Robinson on this episode. We're going to discuss some of the myths around women, work, the First World War and its immediate aftermath. The Sex Dysqualification Removal Act of 1919 on paper was a social revolution that opened the doors of traditional professions to women from which they had been barred by statute law until that point. They should have been treated as equals, but of course they weren't. Jane Robinson and I discussed some fascinating examples of female pioneers trying to live, work,

establish themselves in careers that had been traditionally closed off to them. Absolutely fascinating episode. I hope you enjoy it. If you do want to listen to more podcasts, if you want to watch a range of history documentaries, you can do so. God, are you lucky things. You can go to historyhit.tv. Imagine not knowing this exists, hearing about it now and discovering it for the first time. All of your history-related problems are solved. All of them, right here, right now.

Type onto a keyboard, historyhit.tv. You will find a Netflix for history, just for history, full of wonderful Prankster History fans. We've fans got elena janega storming the charts with her history of medieval england at the moment knocking me off all top three spots which i'm very glad to see indeed she's a total legend please go and watch that like everybody else so head over to historyhit.tv but in the meantime enjoy this with Jane Robinson. Jane, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Pleasure. Did the First World War liberate women?

That's what we're told in school. What was the effect of the First World War on women, particularly in the professions that you're looking at? Yeah, I think we do learn that the First World War opened all these doors for women because, of course, the men were away fighting. And so they stepped into the roles that had traditionally been just for men before. So women became doctors, they started to work in offices, they started to work on the railway, all sorts of roles were taken over by women. And then you tend to think, well, that's it, job done. After the war, the precedent had been set and they could

carry on working. But that was not the case for a couple of reasons, really. Returning servicemen obviously wanted their jobs back. And so women were expected to put on their pinnies and retreat to the kitchen. The other thing was that many people thought that England would never be great again unless the old days of empire could be resurrected great again unless the old days of empire could be resurrected. And in the old days of empire, there was no place for women in the establishment. So that's another reason why they were supposed to retreat into the background again. And there's obviously a lot of legislation at the end of the war, the Sexist Qualification Removal Act of 1919. What was the ambition behind that act?

Removal Act of 1919. What was the ambition behind that act? It was the latest chapter in a long story, really, which began, I guess, in the 1860s, when women first started fighting in an organised way for suffrage and by implication for a voice in society. And that campaign grew and grew until, as most of us know, in 1918, women were given the vote. Only women of 30 and over, but it was a start. A year after that, the Sex Disqualification Removal Act, or SDRA for sake of simplicity, was passed as a sort of part two of giving women the vote. But it was just paying lip service really to a very large group of women who by now had had 50 years campaigning behind them and said that they wanted not only a voice in parliament, but they wanted higher education and they wanted

the right to use their degrees when they had them in the professions. So it said, well, yes, when they had them in the professions. So it said, well, yes, we won't stop you from working in the traditional professions. But it was very ambiguous. The civil service, for example, had a complete exemption, so they were allowed to sidestep it altogether. And it was couched in such wishy-washy terms that, for example, Cambridge University didn't bother to give its women degrees until 1948, even though under the terms of the SDRA in 1919, that should have been a given. It wasn't obviously anywhere like enough. Was it a start? Was it the first time there'd been a sex disqualification that had ever been legislated for by the UK Parliament? I think it was the first time that it had been actively

legislated. There have been Acts of Parliament before which had actively disqualified women, if you see what I mean. So the Great Reform Act in 1832 was the first one to say that women were not actually people in a legal sense, therefore they couldn't vote. The Medical Act of 1858 said that doctors had to be registered, and of course women couldn't be registered by the GMC. But the SDRA was the first to actually enable women rather than forbid them from entering the establishment. I guess the point is that it was not followed through in its spirit by many organisations, including the civil service. Because I mean, technically, women should have been able to then take a full part in civil society, magistrates, jurors,

all the professions. I mean, it swept away all of the restrictions on them. But did it then become a matter of practice and you couldn't fix it just with the big sledgehammer of legislation? That's exactly the problem. You would think that an act like that, especially after women had the vote, would be throwing open the doors of the establishment and saying, come along in, you know, it's ours, come and join us. But after the war, certainly in London and elsewhere, medical schools either capped the numbers of women students or forbade them from entering altogether. So they'd had that taste of freedom during the war. And then the doors were slammed shut again. And then even if you could go into the profession, so you could start to read for the bar, for example, after the SDRA was passed in 1919. But then you suddenly hit upon

the massive barrier of the marriage bar, which meant that should you choose to get married, then you couldn't work if you were a woman. So there were various secondary obstacles in your way, even after the Act was passed. Can we just dwell on that marriage one? Because I meet a lot of veterans from the Second World War who did jobs of extreme importance, from Bletchley to plotting RAF and Royal Navy headquarters bunkers, and yet they were all kicked out when they got married. Is that kind of a cultural idea about the role of a wife and mother,

or were they seen to be a security? What's going on with that marriage bar? I think it was mostly cultural. And I don't know, British society was so sclerotic. It was so rigid. It was so resistant to change. So yeah, okay, let's give them a chance in the workplace and that's fine. And we'll respect them perhaps. And they can do their bit and feel that they contributed to society. But we all know that a woman's real job is to get married and to produce children, to produce strong children who are going to be able to fight the next war and win it. It was articulated, actually. It wasn't even implicit.

It was actually explicitly articulated that if a woman used her brain too much, her womb would wither. And if she did manage to produce children, then they would be puny. They wouldn't be A1. They wouldn't be the sort of children that the British Empire needs to progress to the next generation. It's just, it's extraordinary. The whole thing is extraordinary. And it's not that long ago, Dan. That's what's so amazing. I know. And obviously, I don't want to be too self-congratulatory because obviously many women are still involved in the process of equality and emancipation. Too many women in Britain and elsewhere. Talk about some of these women who just got on with it regardless, the pioneers. Yeah, there are some famous names that a lot of us are aware of, like Amy Johnson, who was the

super glamorous aviatrix and flew solo from England to Australia in a tiny little tiger moth. She was famous. And I should say about her as well, that she was a serious aeroplane engineer. She was president of the Women's Engineering Society for a certain time. That's what really, I was going to say floated her boat, but you know what I mean. But behind the famous names, there was a whole raft of women in all the professions. Women like, one of my favourites is Margaret Partridge, who was a lady who worked in the office of an engineering workshop during the First World War, and then somehow got onto the shop floor and started working in the workshops, and then somehow developed herself as what she called a domestic lighting engineer. And she ended up in Devon, which is where she'd grown up, building power

plants and connecting entire villages to her electricity. You had only to flick a switch in a Margaret Partridge scheme. And lo and behold, the electricity was there in an hour, only an hour it took after you'd switched the switch. And she became famous as the lady with the cables. She went to Bedford College, so she did have a degree. But she was starting from absolute scratch to build herself a career in a competitive field a field where she felt like a guest an imposter even to the end but she was hugely successful what were the jobs in which they were able to flourish was it ones without older traditional professional hierarchies and gatekeepers entrepreneurialism for example where did they manage to establish themselves?

There was no area really that they were able to claim as their own territory. That's the problem with playing catch up as career women, because they play catch up in education, they play catch up actually in the workplace. And there was no area really that was just for them, which meant that it was even harder to try and gain some sort of professional self-respect. So in medicine, you would think perhaps that women would gravitate towards obstetrics and gynecology. But the problem is at medical school in the early days, women were not allowed to go anywhere near the reproductive system in case it shocked them too much or in case it embarrassed the male students with whom they were studying. So that made that a bit difficult. In architecture, you would think perhaps that women might be directed towards interior decoration or something rather nice and fancy like that. But there were

already lots of male designers. They had to fight on exactly the same battleground as all the men. And even if they did want to arrogate some sort of territory to themselves, that was a dangerous thing to do because it meant that you were labelling yourself, you were pigeonholing yourself, and maybe the next generation in the career in which you were first footing would then not have the choice. They would have to go into that area. So they had to think of so much, the pioneers, to try and make sure that what they were doing would bear fruit in the next generation of working women. You're listening to Dance in History, talking women and work and World War I and other things. in its history. We're talking women and work and World War I and other things. More after this.

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conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. What do you think the next generation of working women do owe these pioneers? Well, equality is a long game, as we know, and we're playing it still. And when I talk to modern women with any sort of professional ambition, they still tell me that they feel like imposters

despite years of experience. But I think a really important thing to bear in mind is that role models are not only a comfort, but a real inspiration. And I think it's terribly important to realise that a generation, two generations ago, there were just ordinary women prepared to do what they believed they could do well and pave the way, break down the path with a great machete for those of us who follow. Just bear in mind that these were you and I,

but with none of the advantages that we enjoy in the workplace because of what they did. I always think they didn't want to be bloody pioneers and macheting everything out the way. This one's to a bit of doctoring and architecture. I mean, it must be life's hard enough without finding yourself at the cutting edge of being like in an emancipation campaign. It must have just been completely exhausting. I couldn't agree more. And some of them waved the machete with great gusto and a certain militancy. But others, as you say, just

wanted to get on with a job that they knew they could do well, that they knew would be valuable, and that they knew would be fulfilling. And it was very hard. What are the lessons, rather than sort of celebrating them and putting them on pedestals, what are the ongoing lessons? What do we need to do in our culture and our organisations to make sure that no other generation has to go through what they went through? Oh, that's such a hard question. I think the thing that got the pioneers through was mutual support, was networking, was a lack of defensiveness, which is what hallmarked the professional workplace before they came along, I think. But at the heart of it all was mutual support. So you get

women doctors building hospitals and using women lawyers as their legal advisors and using women architects to actually build the wards. And it's this mutual respect and mutual support, which we should hang on to, I think, and that should be at the heart of any sort of progress. Funny, I talked to a few women philanthropists, friends of mine. They said the whole point about the Boys Club is we don't want to recreate the Boys Club. But unfortunately, often that network effect is really important. But are we in danger of just turning ourselves

into what we were trying to overturn? Well, the thing about the old Boys Club is that it was pretty exclusive in many ways. If it was school, if it was university, if it was military, if it was the services, it was an exclusive club almost by definition. The thing about women's social networks is that they were born out of inclusivity. So I guess the first network was the suffrage campaigners in the 1860s. And that was people wanting to give every woman a voice. It was reaching out and it wasn't defending territory. It was trying to explore and reach out and bring light to women's

lives. And I think that sort of network is the one that bears healthy fruit. Good point. Yeah, these are not people trying to get all their mates from Harrow into senior positions. Which other women should we know more about? Should we look to for inspiration from this generation? One of my favourites is a young woman called Gwyneth Bebb. She was a Welsh girl. She was one of the first to read law at Oxford. And Oxford didn't give its women degrees till the SDRA,

till 1920, actually. But she went up during the First World War. She had an ambition to be a lawyer. And she actually sued the Law Society for not letting women train as lawyers before the SDRA was passed. Of course, she got nowhere because you had to have a precedent to train as a lawyer if you were a woman. And because no women had trained before, there was no precedent.

So it was this horrible, circular, smug argument going on. But she persevered. And when the SDRA was passed, she was one of the first to be accepted to read for the bar at Lincoln's Inn. She was admitted to Lincoln's Inn the day after her first daughter was born. So this disproves immediately the common argument that if you were a clever woman, you were infertile. And also nobody would want to marry you anyway, because you were probably as ugly as sin if you used your brain.

She did incredibly well at Lincoln's Inn. She also worked for the Ministry of Food during the war. She got an OBE for her war work. She had another baby. You would think she almost had it all. Incredibly sadly, Gwyneth died in childbirth after her second baby was born. And her future looks so bright. And to those of us who admire her, as I say, she almost had it all. To those who thought that training women for law was a waste of time, and there were plenty of them, they said, oh, sad, isn't it? But there you are. She's a woman. She died in childbirth. What a waste of a damn good training. So many people were inspired by Gwyneth to carry on, become barristers. And she's a real heroine today, not just to women in the law, but to members of her own family who are so, so proud of her.

It's amazing the lengths to which men went to exclude women. Do you think the deep, dark reality for men is that we all thought, actually, if we let these people apply for these jobs, they can be better than we are? It has to be insecurity. Yes, I mean, that was a very valid point. They did think they would be better than them. That was one of the reasons why they didn't really want women to take university degrees, because they started getting rather better marks than a lot of the men. I think another reason was that it was somehow thought undignified for a man to take orders from a woman. So if a woman was promoted above a man,

that would be very distasteful. An explicit argument against women being in any position of authority at work was that men's wives wouldn't like it if they'd been told what to do by another woman at work. I mean, you're saying there's a depth of prejudice, but there was a shallowness as well. It was playground prejudice. One of the reasons that men didn't want women to read for the bar was because you have to go to regulation dinners at your inns of court. And they said, well, the women might eat all the cheese. And then architects said, we can't have women architects. Quick, let's think of a reason why we can't have women architects. I know, ladies can't climb ladders. So architects thought they were safe because women didn't know

what to do with their skirts and their ankles when faced with a ladder on site. To us, it's laughable, but to the pioneers, you must have wanted to just bang your head against the wall. But you had to keep well behaved because otherwise they would just say, I told you they're all strident battle axes. What did we say? It must have been just exhausting, as told you they're all strident battle axes. What did we say? It must have been just exhausting as it remains for too many women today, but just constantly battling against that kind of idiotic prejudice. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast. What is the book called? In fact, you've cleverly inserted the title already, but tell me what the book's called. It's called Ladies Can't Climb Ladders, The Pioneering Adventures of the First

Professional Women. I mean, ladies can't climb ladders. Tell you what, my daughter's natural It's called Ladies Can't Climb Ladders, the pioneering adventures of the first professional women. I mean, ladies can't climb ladders. Tell you what, my daughter's natural environment is a ladder. She's happier on a ladder than she is on a terra firma. Thank you very much for coming on and very good luck with it. Pleasure. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all work on and finish. Hi, just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from

the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast. We can do more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.