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The marriage bar The marriage bar required single women to resign from their job on getting mar- ried and disqualified married women from applying for vacancies. The bar was in common use in Ireland until the 1970s, which means that there are women alive today with first-hand experience of it. Laura Bambrick discusses the importance of recording the living memories of the marriage bar – an important part of labour history Living history – Congress wants your marriage bar story Whilemarriage bars were commonplace throughout Europe,the US and beyond,from the late 1800s,Ireland was one of the last countries to lift the ban. This puts us in the unusual position of having women alive today who were affected by the marriage bar. Congress is eager that these women’s first-hand accounts of this important episode in labour history are documented for future generations.Together with RTÉ we would like to hear fromwomenwho had to leavea jobbecauseof themarriagebar.RTÉwillrecordaseriesof television interviews tobroadcastaspecialprogramme from within its existing scheduled programmes if there is sufficient interest from women willing to share their experiences andmemories of the bar. If you, or someone you know, would like to participate or would like to discuss the project, please contact Laura Bambrick by email to: laura.bambrick@ictu.ie or Tel: 01 889 7777 or Christopher McKevitt of RTÉ at: chris.mckevitt@rte.ie All correspondence will be treated with absolute confidence.
Women first became public servants on February 5, 1870, when the Post Office took over the telegraph system from pri- vate companies. Five years later, 30 women were employed as clerks in the Postal Saving Bank, where, as a rule, married women were ineligible to be hired on permanent con- tracts and single women on such contracts were required to resign on marriage. In 1890women entered the civil service, as typists, on a trial basis.Within two years they were successfully employed in seven gov- ernment departments. When, in 1893, the women campaigned to be made permanent this was agreed, but also that their contract would terminate on marriage. In place of their pension and to reduce the temptation not to marry, they would be paid a ‘marriage gratuity’ of a month’s salary for each year worked, up to a maximumof 12 months. For the government, the marriage bar was primarily a cost saving initiative – if women were forced to retire on marriage, they would not remain in the service long enough to rise very high in the salary scale. The bar also reflected social attitudes that it was a husband’s duty to support his wife and a married woman’s place was in the home. Female public servants differed in opinion on the marriage bar. Those employed in routine and low-paid work were generally in favour whereas those employed in the higher ranks, as clerks and factory inspectors, were more likely to resent it. During World War I the total number of women employed in the public service increased from 65,000, with 90% in non-clerical grades at the PostOffice, to 170,000, in most departments performing every type of work. Despite this, at the end of the war the government strengthened the marriage bar by putting into legislation what had been a department regulation.
After Independence Irish women’s access to employment and equal treatment at work worsened following independence in December 1922. Within the first year, legislation removed a widow’s right to return to her civil service job on the death of her husband. From 1926 the Minis- ter for Finance was given discretionary power to hire married women to the public service, but only in exceptional circumstances and only on a temporary, non-pensionable con- tract. As in the UK, there was no formal marriage bar on temporary staff. In spite of this, resignation on marriage and the non-recruitment of married women was common practice in temporary posts, with the exception of office cleaners. In 1941 the Local Government Act gave the Minister for Local Government and Public Health the power to disqualify mar- ried woman from applying for or holding permanent positions in local authority ser- vices, including state-run institutions. Although it had been practice since independence that in order to qualify for such jobs women had to be unmarried or widowed, it was only when a loophole was found in the marriage bar that the policy was made official to prevent a recurrence. At the time only 5% of women working in nursing were married. Once they went back to work after marriage, a married nurse or midwife was employed on a con- tinuous temporary contract and paid at the lowest point of the pay scale, indefinitely. In his recently published book on the his- tory of the INMO, ACentury of Service , Mark Loughrey gives an excellent account of the
marriage bar – how it impacted on individ- ual women, the support the ban had among many, mostly younger, nurses (who stood to gain in terms of employment opportunities and increased seniority), and the success- ful efforts of the INO in 1969 in winning annual increments for married members. While private and semi-state employers were not legally obliged to apply a mar- riage bar, it was widespread practice to include a clause in letters of appointment to female workers that their employment ended once they married. For example, An Post, CIE, Aer Lingus, banks and, two of the largest employers, Jacob’s Biscuits and the Guinness brewery all had marriage bars. Abolishing the bar The ban on the employment of married women in the civil service and wider public and semi-state sectors was not lifted until 1973, on foot of a recommendation of the Commission on the Status of Women and a shift in public opinion on working wives. Around 700 female civil servants had been forced to resign from their jobs on marriage in each of the preceding three years. They, along with all other former public sector workers affected by the marriage bar, now had the right to get back their previous jobs, but only if they could show they were no longer supported by their husbands by reason of desertion, separation or ill-health. Marriage bars in the private sector were finally abolished in 1977, when European law made it illegal to discriminate in employment on the grounds of sex and marital status. Laura Bambrick is social policy officer with the Irish Congress ofTrade Unions
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