The Wife Drought

by Annabel Crabb

  Employees measure how they’re going at work in all sorts of ways. There are the obvious, structural elements: Have I been fired? Have I been given a pay rise recently? Am I on my final formal warning? In some workplaces there are other measurements; the brain-constricting horror of the formal performance appraisal process, for instance, in which two people who deeply do not want to be there talk awkwardly about dot points. These processes are the revenge that human resources professionals take upon the world, and it is a cruel revenge. (My favourite ever performance review was with my political editor Michael Gordon in Canberra at the Age. Michael, a great journalist, a lovely person, and a reluctant manager, sat down and we were silent for about two minutes. ‘Happy?’ he eventually asked. ‘Yep!’ I responded. Relieved, we wrapped things up.)

  But the most immediate feedback an employee gets at work is much more low-level, and much more constant; it’s how they’re treated every day, both by their employers and by colleagues. Does she get invited along for planning sessions? If a bunch of people are going out for a sandwich, is he invited along or not? Do people interrupt her when she’s speaking, and do others think that’s okay? Does he get teased? Does the boss smile and joke with her? These are the status indicators that can let you know – at work – how you’re going.

  People are quite sophisticated gadgets, really. If it becomes clear that a certain course of behaviour results in mistreatment, then most people will avoid that course of behaviour if feasible to do so. Thus, the low-level responses you get at work to things like leaving early to pick up a child may be quite influential on subsequent decisions.

  Sometimes, of course, you can navigate your way through it. My boss at the ABC, Kate Torney, has three children and, back when she worked as a producer in Melbourne, used to come in at 7 am and work until 3 pm, so that she could collect her children from school. Every afternoon, one of her colleagues, a bloke we’ll call Geoff, made – without fail – a remark. ‘That’s it for the day, is it, Kate?’ he’d call out as she departed. ‘Nice to have an early mark?’

  One day, as Kate was buckling herself in for the dawn drive to work, she placed a call to Geoff’s mobile. It rang out. ‘Morning, Geoff! It’s ten to seven. Just letting you know I’m on my way in to the office,’ she trilled, in a message to his voicemail. ‘Maybe see you there later on!’ Geoff never mentioned the matter again.

  All of these patterns are changeable. What it takes is for people to have the determination to do it: Charlie, ignoring the teasing from his colleagues, or Brendan, staring down his boss. Kate, defusing a low-level situation with a deft comeback. But humans are humans. We usually find it easier not to change. And that’s why, for all the changes that the last five decades have held for women, the changes for men have been scandalously narrow. Men continue to be over-represented at work, and under-represented at home. Viewed one way, this is an unforgivable and continuing annexation of money, power and influence. Viewed the other way up, it’s a continuing tragedy for children and for men, bound tight into a web of expectations no one even asked them if they wanted.

  3

  WITH THIS RING, I THEE MAKE REDUNDANT

  Marriage is an ancient and continuing tradition, with a ready knack of providing fodder for human controversy. As a species, we are capable of worrying simultaneously that not enough people want to be married (spiralling divorce rates) and that too many people want to be married (same-sex unions). The fact that marriage is a life-changing experience is a widely made point. It renders one statistically more likely to own platters. And four-wheel-drives. Research is thin on this point, but I bet it would support my suspicion that marriage makes romantic comedy somehow more palatable. Fifty years ago, however, marriage did even more profound things for women than causing them furtively to enjoy reruns of Love, Actually. For many, marriage meant an abrupt and compulsory end to their careers.

  Even the most articulate, reasonable and well-informed modern lady-whinger about inequities in the contemporary workplace would draw breath at the terms of the old Commonwealth Public Service Act, section 49, part (2), which decreed that ‘Every female officer shall be deemed to have retired from the Commonwealth service upon her marriage.’1

  That’s correct: women were obliged to resign once they got married. A lady whose yearning for a suitable husband had temporarily been sidelined for a career in the public service would thus be required – upon the magical appearance of the longed-for squire – to gather her things and head home for a new life of domesticity. This law was known as the ‘marriage bar’, although, as it only applied to women and not to men, it might more accurately have been called the ‘wife bar’.

  There were exceptions: typists, for instance, were deemed to do work that was unsuitable for men, and were thus permitted to stay at work, albeit on a temporary basis, with neither entitlements nor superannuation.

  Teachers, too, had slightly different terms. They were employed by state governments, which in the main had similar laws to the federal one. But teaching was awkwardly dependent on the work of women, and the prospect of fragrant mass desertion in a flurry of confetti was not one the nation’s education systems could necessarily countenance. So, in many states, female teachers who got married were merely obliged to resign their permanent positions and be re-employed in a ‘supply’ position.

  This meant renouncing long service leave, any seniority or promotion they might hitherto have earned, any prospect of further advancement, and any expectation to be paid during school holidays. Disclosure of any matrimonial tendency was mandatory; as Regulation 14 of the Western Australian Education Department barked in 1898: ‘Female teachers intending to marry must notify the Minister of such intention and will only be allowed to retain their position by special consent.’2

  The marriage bar was in place from Federation. Its spirit was inherited, along with much of the shape of Australia’s federal legislative framework, from Westminster, which had enacted a similar provision for women in the British civil service. But in 1922, the ban was spelled out in greater detail in a new amendment passed by the government of Billy Hughes.

  The measure had a number of purposes. Such as protecting the children of Australia who otherwise were in grave danger of cold dinners. And ensuring that married women, who by definition already had someone to earn the money, didn’t swipe good jobs either from men, who were supposed to be the providers, or from spinsters, who presumably needed the money for cat food and insulation against the gnawing despair of their unmarried state.

  It is worth revisiting the genteel back-and-forth in the House of Representatives that preceded the passage of the 1922 legislation. At that time, Reps debate was still a gentlemanly affair. Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to that stately place, was still twenty-one years away. (She was still in Tasmania, not even halfway through her spectacular maternal innings of twelve live births.)

  Section 49 of the Commonwealth Public Service Act was squired through the Parliament by Attorney-General Littleton Groom, Nationalist MP for the seat of Darling Downs. In one of the more compelling sequences of the debate, he was cross-examined as to the section’s purpose by Austin Chapman MP, a fellow Nationalist and the Member for Eden-Monaro. Chapman – an independent type – had already made a name for himself by lobbying strongly for the location of the new parliament in Canberra, and having designed a light-weight wheat bag known as the ‘Chapman Sack’. Thanks to a stroke, he had the use of only one arm, but his brain was all right.

  The exchange is remarkable for several reasons, not least the sheer exoticism of seeing a minister challenged lucidly and publicly by a member of his own political party; not something that would ever happen today. Keep an eye out for contributions from two other Nationalists – Frederick Francis, the Member for Henty, and George Maxwell, who was born in Scotland, was blind in one eye, and represented the Victorian seat of Fawkner. Also Labor’s James Fenton, the Member for Maribyrnong.

  Mr Chapman: Why should a female officer be deeme
d to have retired from the Service upon her marriage?

  Attorney-General: Because it would be difficult for a woman to attend to her household as well as her departmental duties. There would be a conflict of duty. This clause is in accordance with the practice of all Public Servants.

  Mr Francis: But supposing a woman has an invalid husband?

  Attorney-General: The Board may take into account ‘special circumstances’. A married woman may in certain circumstances be given temporary employment in the Service, and as a matter of fact, many widows are in many cases temporarily employed as office-cleaners. In this clause, however, we are dealing with the permanent Service, entrance to which is to be secured only by passing the prescribed examination. I do not think we could adopt any other course than that for which the clause provides.

  Mr Chapman: Under this clause a female officer on her marriage will be discharged from the Service.

  Attorney-General: That has always been the law.

  Mr Chapman: Is there any reason we should perpetuate such an anomaly? Why should we not depart from some of these musty old precedents? I know of a lady in the Public Service who wants to get married, but is told that if she does so she must retire. She has a splendid record, has done good work in the Service, and does not wish to leave it. It is not fair that she should be called, upon her marriage, to retire.

  Mr Maxwell: Is it not in the public interest that a female officer on her marriage should retire from the Service?

  Mr Chapman: Why?

  Mr Maxwell: Because if she remained in the Service she would have to neglect her home duties.

  Mr Chapman: If the Government is charged with the responsibility of seeing that every woman attends to her home duties, that is another matter. Women in the Service are paid to attend – not to home, but to public duties. What would the single members of this Committee say if a Bill were introduced providing that on their marriage they should automatically cease to be members of this Parliament? In this clause the Government are merely seeking to perpetuate a silly tradition. Escape from such a provision will be possible only by the use of political influence. All that a woman in the Service should be asked when she is about to marry is: ‘Can you carry on your duties satisfactorily after your marriage?’ If she says that she can, why should she be called upon to leave the Service?

  Mr Fenton (Maribyrnong): I cannot agree with all that has been said by the Honorable Member for Eden-Monaro. Surely he would not contend that a female officer who marries a man with an income of £1000 a year should be allowed to remain in the Service?

  Mr Chapman: Why should she be discharged?

  Mr Fenton: A woman who is maintained by her husband should not come into competition with single women or men desiring to enter the Service … In my view, there should be a preference to men, in order that they may qualify to marry and maintain the women.3

  (Mr Fenton did, later in his address, soften insofar as to concede that ‘in a thinly-populated district, the wife of a storekeeper could act as postmistress’. This gimlet-eyed pragmatism in respect of matters postal paid off ten years later, when Joe Lyons made him Postmaster General.)

  Mr Chapman: I move that sub-clause be left out. The sub-clause that I wish to omit provides that every female officer shall be deemed to have retired from the Service upon her marriage … There is no need for a provision such as this, and the only reason the Minister gave for its appearance in the clause is that it has been the custom for women in the past to retire on their marriage. Why should women be penalised? Why should they not be paid as much for their services as is paid to men? Equal pay for equal work. They are admitted to the legal and medical professions on equal terms with men, and I fail to see why they should be penalised if they enter the Public Service. I refuse to accept the Minister’s assurance that the Board will have the power to consider ‘special circumstances’. Those who are humble and poor, and cannot pull strings, will be differently treated from those who can use influence. If the Minister wishes to retain the sub-clause, he should give us good reasons for its retention. A woman who is giving good service should not be dismissed merely because she is married.

  Mr Pratten: It is placing a premium on spinsterhood!

  Attorney-General: The honorable Member for Eden-Monaro proposes that women in the Service who marry shall be allowed to remain, but I do not think that at all desirable. Indeed, experience has proven it to be quite undesirable. The provision to which he takes exception is one which applies generally to the Public Services.

  Chapman: Why not sack a man when he gets married?4

  And with that quixotic final volley from the Member for Eden-Monaro, the matter was put to a vote, and Chapman’s amendment went down in a screaming heap, thirty-five votes to six. The marriage bar was passed.

  It is at this point in the Hansard that I consider finding out where Mr Chapman is buried, and taking a large bunch of flowers to plonk on him, the dear old chap. His independence of thought does not seem to have hampered his progression; Chapman was made Minister for Trade and Customs in 1923, but his time there was both brief and unhappy. He resigned due to ill-health in 1924 and was dead by 1926, God rest his soul.

  In this and similar debates at the time, it was not uncommon for the question of equal pay for women to crop up. Though, it must be said, support for equal pay was based not so much on any sense that it was unfair to pay women less, and more on the fear that cheap female labour would fiendishly undercut male wages.

  The marriage bar persisted for another forty-four years. The United States and Canada repealed their equivalent legislation, as did the UK in 1946, but still Australian wives, through the 1940s and the 1950s, were obliged to choose between work in the public service and marriage. Most women copped it sweet and left without a fuss. But for some, the laws represented a challenge to their personal ingenuity.

  Merle Thornton, now in her eighties, got a job in the federal Department of Social Services in 1952. She had a degree in English Literature from the University of Sydney. ‘I was very unhappy there, because it was very routinised work,’ she recalls. ‘I had been appointed as a graduate clerk, and they really felt I ought to get my comeuppance, so they sat me down with a typed list, and a pile of envelopes to address.’

  Such repetitive work obviously left Merle vulnerable to other fascinations and quite soon, in her spare time, she had fallen in love with a man called Neil, whom she swiftly decided to marry. The extent to which this happy event would mess with her career was something Merle only realised when the woman who sat next to her – ostensibly a single lass – was summarily sacked one day. A caller to the switchboard had asked for her by her married name. Merle was appalled. ‘I thought – Oh! Okay, I’ll call the union. Only to find that the unions were the major supporters of the bar,’ she recalls.

  So Merle became one of many white-veil criminals; she got married in secret. ‘I just didn’t tell anyone. I thought, Whatever am I doing? What does this train me for? Being a spy? It was difficult. The punishment for living in sin at the time was horrendous – full-face disapprobation and discrimination, not only in society but at work, or when looking for accommodation.’

  Merle eventually applied successfully for a transfer – ‘I explained that I was occupationally maladjusted’ – and landed in the ABC managing director Charles Moses’ office as his personal assistant and correspondence officer. It was a job she loved. But her first child – a son – was already on his way, a fact which even strategic wardrobe choices could disguise for only so long; in the end, it was almost a relief to abandon the pretence and resign.

  The taste for civil disobedience, once acquired, is hard to repress. In 1965, Merle became an international sensation when – having moved to Queensland – she chained herself, with a friend, to the public bar of Brisbane’s Regatta Hotel (a bar from which, like all public bars, she and her friend, like all women, were still banned). With the resultant notoriety and publicity, she helped form the Equal Opportunities for Women As
sociation, which lobbied the Menzies Government hard to repeal the marriage bar.

  The group collected stories from women all around Australia, demonstrating the hardship and idiocy occasioned by the law. They make plaintive reading.

  My name is Rita Grey. I was employed as a physicist by the State Public Service in Western Australia. When I met the man of whom I became very fond I realised that by marrying him, I would have to give up my career. I knew that if I did this I would be absolutely frustrated and was realistic enough to predict that our marriage would suffer as a result. So I decided to ‘live in sin’ as an alternative. I did this quite openly and continued to work for the Public Service for eight years. During this time I reared three children and the Public Service officials were cooperative in enabling me to take my annual leave to correspond with confinement periods. Yet when for the sake of the children I decided to marry their father, I was asked to resign. One of the officials pointed out that it was not morally desirable for a married woman to work.5