# What rights and privileges were women denied up until the last 50ish years **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 14, 2014, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552 "2014-08-14T22:53:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/21 "2014-08-15T11:05:46Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Tubal ligation or other permanent sterilization for a young woman or a woman of any age before she had multiple children was nearly unheard of until this century (that is, the _21st_, not the 20th!), and it’s still nearly impossible in many areas of the US. It’s not illegal, but it’s very very hard to find a doctor willing to do it (although it’s improving.) To be fair I have seen many accounts of young men with no children either being flat denied or strongly discouraged by medical professionals when they seek a vasectomy, the thinking seems to be that they will change their mind. I’ve seen advice saying to lie about your age or about having kids. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/22 "2014-08-15T11:21:27Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > It’s true. Women have always worked outside the home. What you said up thread, about women having careers - that’s where you’re wrong. Men had a careers. Women had jobs. Women’s jobs were subordinate positions and grunt work, and even then, their work was often labelled as “helping out” or “making ends meet”. And women got home, there wasn’t any wife waiting for them to cook them supper, wash their dirty clothes, and keep the kids out of their hair. > > The real difference of course is that women, in addition to jobs, had children and housework and a husband who expected to be given control of her paycheck. They didn’t earn as much money, they didn’t have management opportunities, they weren’t offered partnerships. There was no career track for women. They could maybe get a job managing the other ladies in the typist pool but managing the men? No. > > Women could be workers. They couldn’t be the boss, not even of their own homes. You must have mistaken me for someone else, since I did not say anything about “women having careers”. What you said is true of course, with the caveat, that until the second part of the last century, most people did not have careers. Skilled professionals who could command huge salaries/ fees were mostly a rarity. You had doctors and lawyers, and later engineers\*, but the vast majority of jobs were what we call blue collar. - Doctors, lawyers and engineers had other difficulties in entering. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/23 "2014-08-15T11:32:35Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > The real difference of course is that women, in addition to jobs, had children and housework and a **husband who expected to be given control of her paycheck**. They didn’t earn as much money, they didn’t have management opportunities, they weren’t offered partnerships. There was no career track for women. They could maybe get a job managing the other ladies in the typist pool but managing the men? No. > > Women could be workers. They couldn’t be the boss, not even of their own homes. I’d take issue with one bit of your post - I believe it was a strong pattern among respectable working class folks of the nineteenth/early twentieth century (at least in the UK and Australia - don’t have much of a feeling for US situation) that the husband would hand over his pay to the wife, who would then hand him back “his share” for the pub or wherever, and use the rest for the family finances. (Any working kids were expected to hand their entire paypacket to mum too, and maybe if they were lucky they’d get some pin money back) The wastrel drunkards who went to the pub first and drank it all was a figure of contempt. This despite the lack of the married womens’ property act etc etc - legally the money may have been considered to belong to the man, but socially and culturally there was a lot of pressure the other way. _Upper class_ women, of course, were still screwed until after eighteen-ninety-whateveritwas. ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/24 "2014-08-15T11:35:57Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Even after contraception was made legal, many doctors required married women to have their husband’s consent before the doctor would prescribe it to her. This lasted well into the 1970s. > > What of a single woman who wanted contraception? Surely you jest. What on earth would a women need contraception for if she wasn’t married? :eek: Contraception wasn’t made universally legal to unmarried women until 1972, in the judgement [Eisenstadt v. Baird](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenstadt_v._Baird). > > Tubal ligation or other permanent sterilization for a young woman or a woman of any age before she had multiple children was nearly unheard of until this century (that is, the _21st_, not the 20th!), and it’s still nearly impossible in many areas of the US. It’s not illegal, but it’s very very hard to find a doctor willing to do it (although it’s improving.) In 1971, after a pregnancy with all kinds of complications, my mom still had to have my dad’s signature and they had to go to the hospital’s board to do a tubal because her age multiplied by the number if her children didn’t equal 120. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/25 "2014-08-15T11:53:56Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I know spousal rape wasn’t a crime up until about 40 years ago, which was surprising when I first heard about that. Its not just that the crime wasn’t taken seriously, it was the idea that there was no crime recognized by law. I assume the same applied to domestic violence, it wasn’t even codified as a crime. Spousal rape wasn’t a crime because the exemption was written into the law with a phrase like " a woman not his wife" or some such thing. Domestic violence was different. In most (if not all ) places the law itself did not provide an exemption- assault or battery or harassment laws didn’t say > [@](#): > > A person is guilty of assault in the third degree when: 1. With intent to cause physical injury to another person _other than his wife_, he causes such injury to such person or to a third person; or 2. He recklessly causes physical injury to another person _other than his wife_; or 3. With criminal negligence, he causes physical injury to another person _other than his wife_ by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument. - Engaging in that behavior toward your wife was just as illegal as engaging in it toward anyone else. It didn’t always (or even often ) lead to arrest or prosecution, but it was very different from the rape laws that made it a legal impossibility for a man to rape his wife. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/26 "2014-08-15T12:51:20Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I’ve heard that up until the '60s or '70s then in some high schools shop class was _only_ for boys and home ec was _only_ for girls. This is true. In the late 1970’s I wanted to take woodshop and drafting. My parents and I had to go before the school board to make our case so I could do so. Two years later they decided it was a good idea for _everyone_ to take woodshop and home ec. The drafting teacher quit rather than have to teach any more girls. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/27 "2014-08-15T13:08:16Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > You must have mistaken me for someone else, since I did not say anything about “women having careers”. /facepalm That was Alley Dweller who mentioned “careers”, not you, AK84. I beg your pardon. > [@](#): > > What you said is true of course, with the caveat, that until the second part of the last century, most people did not have careers. Skilled professionals who could command huge salaries/ fees were mostly a rarity. You had doctors and lawyers, and later engineers\*, but the vast majority of jobs were what we call blue collar. Sure and that’s probably true today although blue collar jobs, per se, are not necessarily as common as previously. But by career, I meant not just educated professions, but any form of work which had opportunities for advancement and managerial power. It’s the difference between being a worker and being someone with prospects. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/28 "2014-08-15T13:18:55Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Keep in mind, too, that if a woman in any profession married she was expected to quit. Some married nurses continued to work, but it was often a requirement that female teachers NOT be married, ever. Where the hell was this? My mother married in 1939 and worked as a teacher her whole life, up until normal retirement age. I do not believe she was unusual, amongst the other female teachers she worked with, in being married. When I was in primary school, in the 1950s (so over 50 years ago), I had more than one teacher who was to be addressed as Mrs … (There were also ones who who were Miss …, but those were fewer in number in my experience.) There may have been a time, somewhere, once upon a time, where married female teachers were considered unacceptable, or at least unusual, but not in the UK within the last 70 years or so. What you say is, at best, a huge overgeneralization from some specific type of locality (small town, rural USA, perhaps). ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/29 "2014-08-15T13:19:11Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > I’d take issue with one bit of your post - I believe it was a strong pattern among respectable working class folks of the nineteenth/early twentieth century (at least in the UK and Australia - don’t have much of a feeling for US situation) that the husband would hand over his pay to the wife, who would then hand him back “his share” for the pub or wherever, and use the rest for the family finances. (Any working kids were expected to hand their entire paypacket to mum too, and maybe if they were lucky they’d get some pin money back) The wastrel drunkards who went to the pub first and drank it all was a figure of contempt. This despite the lack of the married womens’ property act etc etc - legally the money may have been considered to belong to the man, but socially and culturally there was a lot of pressure the other way. > > _Upper class_ women, of course, were still screwed until after eighteen-ninety-whateveritwas. I believe “strong pattern” is putting it rather optimistically but I don’t have time to look up cites just at the mo. It certainly happened in some households, I don’t doubt. I suspect it was more often the case that she would give him her money and then he would give whatever he felt was reasonable for “pin money” to her. Handling the bills was his job, in 19th century middle class houses (in the lower classes, everything was more ad hoc). But whichever one was the more common, either way, it was optional on his part. He didn’t have to give her anything. Legally, her position was really not much different than the child’s. It’s a not-inconsiderable form of screwage to know that all of your money is dependent on the goodwill of another person. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/30 "2014-08-15T13:40:06Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Where the hell was this? My mother married in 1939 and worked as a teacher her whole life, up until normal retirement age. I do not believe she was unusual, amongst the other female teachers she worked with, in being married. When I was in primary school, in the 1950s (so over 50 years ago), I had more than one teacher who was to be addressed as Mrs … (There were also ones who who were Miss …, but those were fewer in number in my experience.) > > There may have been a time, somewhere, once upon a time, where married female teachers were considered unacceptable, or at least unusual, but not in the UK within the last 70 years or so. > > What you say is, at best, a huge overgeneralization from some specific type of locality (small town, rural USA, perhaps). In the United States, there were many jurisdictions that prohibited married teachers. Starting in 1895, the Kansas City School Board refused to hire married female teachers. Cite: > [@](#): > > As late as the 1930s, 77% of school districts employed no married women as new teachers and 62% required teachers to resign if they married. ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/31 "2014-08-15T14:54:01Z")
Medical and financial privacy and control in general. It was not unheard of for banks and doctors to cede control of a woman’s bank accounts and medical treatment to her husband. Possibly less common with fathers and brothers, but I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/32 "2014-08-15T15:31:10Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > In the United States, there were many jurisdictions that prohibited married teachers. Starting in 1895, the Kansas City School Board refused to hire married female teachers. Cite: > > > [@](#): > > > > As late as the 1930s, 77% of school districts employed no married women as new teachers and 62% required teachers to resign if they married. So not only specific to certain locations, unlike **Broomstick** ’s generalization, but well before “the last 50ish years” that the thread is meant to be about. ---
**Author:** ![Lonnie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Lonnie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lonnie)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/33 "2014-08-15T15:42:53Z")
As late as 1964 teachers, if married, were not hired in certain districts because ‘they would become pregnant’. And even then women felt that, if they did not like the sight of blood, and if they wanted to be independent, their only choice was to become a teacher. And right now a married woman needs to have credit established in her own name, because if anything happens to her husband, she will have trouble getting credit even if the assets are joint. And even if she earns more than he does or if she is the main breadwinner. So ladies, take heed if you have not already done so. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/34 "2014-08-15T15:50:14Z")
Well up until 1963 in the USA and 1970 in the UK women had no right to equal pay, and even then they were limited rights that had to be legislatively extended in later decades. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/35 "2014-08-15T16:02:57Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > So not only specific to certain locations, unlike **Broomstick** ’s generalization, but well before “the last 50ish years” that the thread is meant to be about. Seems to be an American phenomena. Any idea why? Over here, it was and quite common for teachers to have no other qualification than i) local woman and ii) mother of some of the kids. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/36 "2014-08-15T16:18:53Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Seems to be an American phenomena. Any idea why? Over here, it was and quite common for teachers to have no other qualification than i) local woman and ii) mother of some of the kids. Because we were found(ed) by Puritans. A married woman was a women who was having sex and therefore no good moral role model for impressionable young minds. Remember, we’re the country that demanded [an actual married couple playing a married couple on television sleep in separate beds on screen](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SleepingSingle). I can’t cite law, because I don’t know that it was ever a _law_, but I can confirm that _socially_ amongst my family’s class (white collar professional middle class in the Chicagoland area) the “women could be teachers or nurses (and preferably teachers, because nurses have to look at men’s naked bodies)” was very much a Thing. That’s a quote straight from my mother’s mouth that I heard annually when she got on a tear about how wonderful feminism is and how lucky my generation is that we can “be anything we want to be.” She was born in 1948, got her teaching degree “just in case something happened to her husband,” but of course didn’t work until they divorced in 1981. I was born in 1974 and raised on a diet high in\* Free To Be…You and Me\*. (I totally took it the wrong way and heard that I _shouldn’t_ be a nurse, because it was anti-feminist to be a nurse, which delayed my ultimate career path for, oh, 20 years or so, but that’s another topic for another thread.) ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/37 "2014-08-15T19:26:47Z")
My mother earned an engineering degree in 1944, and went to work in one of the leading research companies of the period doing war-related research, at $30 per week. If she were male, she would have earned $35 per week. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/38 "2014-08-15T20:08:31Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Tubal ligation or other permanent sterilization for a young woman or a woman of any age before she had multiple children was nearly unheard of until this century (that is, the _21st_, not the 20th!), and it’s still nearly impossible in many areas of the US. It’s not illegal, but it’s very very hard to find a doctor willing to do it (although it’s improving.) Only if you belong to some groups. If you belong to the _wrong_ group, then you could even get them tied if you didn’t ask for it! Granted, this may not fit in the 50ish years time frame. As to how easy or not, as you say, it is in the U.S. And even there in some regions. In certain areas, regions, and countries, it is not uncommon for young women with few children to opt for sterilization. Of the woman, usually, not of the men (of course). ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/39 "2014-08-15T20:33:15Z")
Except for one teacher who got married while I was in her class (around 1946), all of my elementary school teachers were unmarried and old. In fact, several had taught my mother, 24 years older than me. I don’t know when married female teachers were permitted, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it came with the war. This was in the gay city of brotherly love. Even in the 1950s I once read that a woman who wanted to buy and sell property had to acquire the status of a “femme seule”, which I assume went back to the Normans. On the other hand, my mother had an aunt who was a doctor, so it was not altogether impossible even back in 1920 or so. When I was growing up there was a “Women’s Medical College”, now the Medical College of Pennsylvania. When I was in elementary school, I did take a course in home ec. I at least learned to sew a seam or a button and also, I do recall, make a gingerbread man. I guess that was advanced for the 1940s. Finally, I have to mention the situation here in Quebec when I arrived in 1968. The law had actually changed, but many merchants still followed the old law. When a married woman wanted to buy something, she had to sign the order and her husband had to sign twice. The first signature was to confirm the order, but the second was to give his wife permission to sign! And women had only gotten the right to vote around 1940. In 1954, I was working in a research lab. One of the researchers was a woman. What I remember about that was being incurious. So it must have seemed ordinary to me at the time. At least I never gave it a thought. There were a couple of female grad students too. When I went to U of IL in 1964, the state legislature had just approved legislation allowing a husband and wife to work in the same dept. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552/40 "2014-08-15T20:38:35Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > So not only specific to certain locations, unlike **Broomstick** ’s generalization, but well before “the last 50ish years” that the thread is meant to be about. Broomstick said, “Some married nurses continued to work, but it was **often** a requirement that female teachers NOT be married, ever.” I think that covers her – she spoke of often, and 62% (to say nothing of 77%) supports “often.” Now, the fifty years thing is a good point, but I don’t know that Broomstick was even intending to stick to the years 1964-present, notwithstanding the OP. I took her comments to be more generally informational than limited to 1964 and onwards. Certainly nothing she wrote suggested to me she was offering up some absolute, razor-edge precise observation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-rights-and-privileges-were-women-denied-up-until-the-last-50ish-years/695552.md?page=3)