Can I pick up the points made by Jayne and Jennifer. Yes, there is an economic point to research in this matter. Women were thoroughly disadvantaged in the work place in two areas.

(1) All pensionable permanent posts were advertised with two salaries, women being paid about a third less than men. There were all sorts of spurious arguments for this and it carried on until well into the 'sixties. Men had to earn more 'cos they had a wife and children to support. Women did not.

(2) Why? because as soon as a woman married she had to resign from her permanent pensionable post and become a temporary employee - even doing exactly what she did before she went on honeymoon. If she had been part of a contributory pension scheme she got her pension contributions back plus (it varied) about 4% simple interest.

For a graduate woman to get married and give up her career was a very big step.I know at least one case (in another profession) where a woman would not give up her job and pension and for years Lived In Sin, secretly of course. And when her employers found out she was Having An Affair, they threatened to sack her.

I am conscious of all this because a friend of mine aged 84, ex-school principal, has just died, and his pension died with him. In their youth there was no such thing as a Widows element in the Pension Fund, so his widow is now utterly dependent on the State.

And if I go back to the original discussion - a graduate woman doing a very competent job, and looking clever, frightened men, so the public persona of a woman archivist arose. Just as it did do competent Heads of Girls Grammar Schools, (frustrated females!), and lecturers in the Universities. I wonder how many of them got promoted to Senior lecturer in the 'forties and 'fifties?

Len McDonald

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L.J. McDonald
46 Weaver Ave
Rainhill
PRESCOT, Merseyside
Phone: 0151-426 5273
Mobile: 07775 914796
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