BANS ON WOMEN
YOU’RE BARRED!
Throughout history, women have faced barriers and discrimination in virtually every area of daily life. We explore eight of the most unusual bans imposed on members of the ‘fairer sex’ in Britain and beyond – and how they were finally revoked
In much of the western world today, men and women are considered equal – at least from a legal perspective. In Britain, the Equality Act 2010 states that no one should be discriminated against because of their sex, although there have remained a few exceptions to the rules (the armed forces, for example, could refuse to employ or promote a woman in certain combat roles until fairly recently).
In the past, however, women weren’t given nearly the same opportunities as they are today. That women weren’t allowed to vote until the early 20th century is common knowledge, but it might surprise you that taking on specific types of jobs and even pursuing certain hobbies was also illegal.
We look at eight particularly striking examples…
1 PLAYING FOOTBALL
During World War I, with so many men off fighting in Europe, women in Britain rose to the challenge of filling in for their male counterparts. This happened not just in the workplace, but also on the football pitch. As the war progressed, the women’s version of the ‘beautiful game’ – which had slowly been growing in the 19th century – kicked off big time.
Formalised into leagues, women’s football drew huge crowds, and the powerhouse team were undoubtedly Dick, Kerr Ladies, formed by munitions workers in Preston. Their Boxing Day match in 1920 against St Helens was watched at Goodison Park (home of Everton FC) by 53,000 fans, with another 14,000 outside trying to cram in.
But the war had ended by then, and there was a desire among many men to put society back to the way it had always been – with women back in the home and, in terms of sports, relegated. In December 1921, the Football Association banned women’s games on their grounds and forbade its members from acting as referees and linesmen. Women’s football was effectively hobbled.
It was claimed that sport was unsuitable for women, with a (female) doctor stating it was “too much for a woman’s physical frame” and could harm fertility. As one team captain put it, the ban was simply “sex prejudice”. It would only be lifted in 1971, meaning women’s football had been off the team for decades, while the men’s game only flourished.
2 INHERITING AND OWNING PROPERTY
Primogeniture – the practice of passing down property and titles – historically favoured men, with daughters only inheriting if there were no appropriate male descendants. In cases where a woman did possess money or property in her own right, it would be acceded to her husband immediately upon their marriage.
The complexities of primogeniture serve as a plot device in many Jane Austen novels. When there are no sons to inherit the family fortune – as in the case of Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion –a ticking time bomb awaits.
The desire to preserve family fortunes through the male line permeated society. As Austen famously writes, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
A wife in possession of a good fortune faced a rather different prospect: giving it all up to her husband. This was, at least, the case until the late 19th century. The Married Women’s Property Act 1870 was a landmark piece of legislation that allowed any money earned by a woman to be considered her own, regardless of her marital status. In 1922, an additional law came into place that allowed a husband and wife to inherit the other’s property in the event of one of their deaths, although it wasn’t until 1926 that women were allowed to inherit, own and dispose of property on exactly the same terms as men.
3 SITTING IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
Women in the United Kingdom first gained the right to vote in 1918, although suffrage was initially only granted to those who were over the age of 30 and either owners of property or married to owners of property.
The law that made it possible – the 1918 Representation of the People Act – was a landmark moment in women’s rights, not just because it enfranchised around 8.5 million female voters, but also because it enabled women to sit in Parliament for the first time.
In December 1918, Countess Constance Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons – although as a member of Sinn Féin, she did not take her seat. As such, Nancy Astor holds the title of the first woman to ever sit in the House of Commons; she was elected as MP for Plymouth Sutton in December 1919.
4 WORKING AFTER MARRIAGE
Even if you don’t count childcare and domestic duties, many women throughout history have worked in some capacity – particularly those among the poorer classes.
However, there certainly were not the equal opportunities in the workplace that we might expect today – and even in countries that we would now consider to be socially liberal, women were outright prevented from holding certain positions.
In particular, it was considered improper for a woman to carry on working in certain professions once she was married. This was called a marriage bar, and it was common in many western countries from the late 19th century to as recently as the 1970s. In the UK, marriage bars meant that married women couldn’t work for Foreign Service until 1973 and the British Geographical Survey until 1975. Teaching and working for the BBC were also professions that prohibited married women, although these bars were both removed in 1944.
According to a 1946 article that appeared in The Spectator, arguments in favour of marriage bars at the time included the idea that “the employment of married women takes employment from those who need it more” and “married women are less reliable and less ‘mobile’ than unmarried women”.
5 WORKING NIGHT SHIFTS
In accordance with the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920, working overnight was once illegal for women in Britain.
That women were barred from the night shift might seem surprising today, but in the early to mid-20th century people considered the ban to be progressive. According to Maurice Edelman, MP for Coventry North, the act was “designed to protect women, among others, from the gross exploitation which so many of them had had to endure during the Industrial Revolution”. Edelman was speaking in a debate about factory night work held in December 1969, in which the question of women working overnight was raised. “I hope nobody will imagine that to protect women from exploitation by limiting their right to work in inferior conditions in any way impinges on the principle of equal pay or equality of opportunity,” he explained. “No civilised person would want women to work underground in pits.”
The Trades Union Congress – which was also strongly against the idea of women working at night – suggested that women should be shielded from the perceived evils of night work because many of them were married and effectively working a multitude of jobs (keeping a house and husband, as well as looking after children). Nowadays, both men and women can partake in the night shift, although those between the ages of 16 and 17 are not allowed to work between midnight and 4am.
6 BEING SERVED IN A PUB
Until 1982, it was legal for the proprietor of a British pub to refuse service to a woman – and not because she’d had enough alcohol already, but simply because of her sex. Some pubs were entirely ‘men-only’, but even those that were open to both sexes wouldn’t usually allow female customers to go in alone. Instead, they would sit in a dedicated snug –a separate room with frosted windows – to wait to be served, or for drinks to be brought to them by their male companions.
It was the Industrial Revolution that changed the dynamic of the pub, which historically had been more inclusive. With multitudes of working men pouring out of the factories, mills and mines, it was deemed necessary for them to have their own watering holes. This established such an unwelcoming precedent that the sight of a woman standing at a bar usually came to mean she was a prostitute.
The landmark change wouldn’t come until the early 1980s. A solicitor named Tess Gill and a journalist, Anna Coote, were banned from El Vino on Fleet Street, London, just for standing up alongside their male colleagues, rather than sitting at the back. They decided enough was enough, took their case to the Court of Appeal and won, calling time on the sexist practice.
7 COMPETING IN THE OLYMPICS
The original Olympic Games in ancient Greece were all-male affairs and the introduction of the modern Games in 1896, held in Athens, was no different. Its organiser, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, had previously declared that the participation of women would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect” – although, fortunately, this was an attitude that did not prevail.
Perhaps Coubertin had a change of heart, as women were permitted to take part at the very next Games in Paris four years later – albeit in a limited capacity. Of the 997 athletes present at the 1900 Olympics, just 22 were women. They competed in five sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism and golf.
Women’s involvement in the Olympics has steadily increased throughout the 20th century, although there are still a handful of sports in which there are still no female athletes: decathlon, Greco-Roman wrestling and one-person dinghy (heavyweight). Since 1991, all new sports joining the programme are obliged to include women’s events, but it wasn’t until London 2012 that every participating country fielded female athletes for the first time.
8 RUNNING THE BOSTON MARATHON
In April 1967, Kathrine Switzer officially entered the Boston Marathon, one of the most significant events in the long-distance running calendar (and the oldest annual marathon in the world). This would be an unremarkable incident today, but at the time, women were banned from running the race. Even Switzer’s coach, Arnie Briggs, thought the distance too far for a “fragile woman” to complete.
To circumvent the archaic ban, Switzer used her initials rather than her first name on her entry race form so as to appear ambiguous about her sex. She was entered into the race under the number 261 and finished the marathon in four hours and 20 minutes. This would be considered a respectable time for many runners – but is perhaps even more impressive considering that the race’s manager, Jock Semple, at one point attempted to physically remove Switzer’s race number during the run.
One year previously, Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Gibb had become the first woman to complete the entire Boston Marathon in an unofficial capacity – much to the chagrin of race director Will Cloney, who had refused her request to register for the run. His reasoning was that women were physically incapable of running 26 miles, which was an odd assessment considering many women were on record at this point as having completed the distance. Violet Piercy of Great Britain, for example, was the first woman to be officially timed in the marathon, managing to complete the feat in three hours and 40 minutes in a race on 3 October 1926.
Gibb decided to run the race anyway, showing up in Boston without a race number and achieving a respectable time of three hours and 21 minutes (beating approximately two thirds of her fellow male runners). “I hadn’t intended to make a feminist statement,” she later explained. “I was running against the distance [not the men] and I was measuring myself with my own potential.”