Gender in the Public Workplace

It is well known, in outline, that the employment opportunities of unmarried middle-class women expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, though by no means to equal those of men. But, apart from excellent work on schoolteachers by Alison Oram and Dina Copelman and on the much smaller population of university teachers by Carol Dyhouse, there are few detailed studies of their experiences and their responses to them.1 These books by Glew and Murphy, both originally PhD theses, valuably expand our knowledge and understanding of areas of work which, although all in the public sector, contrasted in interesting ways. The British civil service was one of the oldest employment sectors in Britain and the largest, employing people at all levels from cleaners and porters to permanent secretaries. The General Post Office, at the heart of Glew’s study, was the largest civil-service department and the first to employ women, from the 1870s. In 1938 it was the largest single employer in Britain, including of women of whom it employed 43,850. Its antiquity as the oldest civil-service department (founded in 1660) and its position at the centre of government with its employment policies controlled by the Treasury, ensured that it was embedded in a certain traditionalism. The Treasury was aware that its employment practices were closely observed by other employers and it was not anxious to encourage gender equality in the workplace; like most employers it simply took inequality for granted. Women were not admitted to the higher administrative grades of the civil service until 1925, following much female protest. Even in 1950 women held fewer than seven per cent of administrative grade posts.

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• No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities 1870-1939

  Margaret Bryant, Carl Dyhouse•British Journal of Educational…•1996

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