Gender, rhetoric and regulation : women's work in the civil service and the London County Council, 1900-55 / Helen Glew

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Glew, Helen, author.

Series:

Gender in history.

Gender in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women in the civil service--Great Britain--History.

Women in the civil service.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 265 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

Collectively, the Civil Service and the London County Council (LCC) employed tens of thousands of women in Britain in the early twentieth century. As public employers, these institutions remained influential for each other and for private employers more widely as a benchmark for the conditions of women's white-collar work. This book examines three key aspects of women's public service employment: inequality of pay, the marriage bar and inequality of opportunity. In so doing, it delineates the levels of regulation and rhetoric surrounding women's employment and the extent to which notions about femininity and womanhood shaped employment policies and, ultimately, women's experiences in the workplace. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, including policy documents, trade union records, women's movement campaign literature and employees' personal testimony, this is the first book-length study of women's public service employment in the first half of the twentieth century. It is also a new lens through which to examine the women's movement in this period and a contribution to the debate about the effect of the First World War on women's employment. Scholars and students with interests in gender, British social and cultural history and labour history will find this an invaluable text.

Contents:

Work for women? Challenges to the gendering of routine work in the LCC and the Civil Service

Trying to get equal opportunities : women in the higher grades of the LCC and the Civil Service in the first half o the twentieth century

'Endless arguments about sex and salaries' : the First World War, reconstruction and the campaigns for equal pay, 1914-24

'As a matter of justice' : the equal pay campaigns from 1924-1939

The slow road to victory : the equal pay campaigns from 1939-1954

Lark rise to spinsterhood? Women, the public service and marriage bar policy, 1900-46

Disabled husbands, deserted wives, working widows : the marriage bar in public servants' private lives until 1946.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 May 2026).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 242-256) and index.

ISBN:

1-5261-0445-8

1-78499-682-3

OCLC:

981863604