Humanities Research Seminar: The Economic Emancipation of Women

The marriage bar – a regulation written into many employment contracts stating that women should leave work on marriage – is most associated with the interwar years in Britain, when the practice was at its height. This paper looks at the first two decades of the twentieth century and examines the significant rise and implementation of marriage bars and the raging debates about married women’s right to be in the workforce. Drawing on employer and union records, newspaper reporting and campaigning materials of women’s organisations, the paper makes two arguments: first, that the widening possibilities of employment, particularly for middle-class women, forced a reckoning with the conventionally-held beliefs about gender roles in marriage, and second, that very visible debate over the use of public funds in employing married women teachers, in particular, had a knock-on effect in facilitating the growth of marriage bars and the upholding of patriarchal values.

Host or Publisher College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UoW