In Days Gone By: What were marriage bars?

In previous articles I mentioned that several legendary Edmonds educators including Frances Anderson, Joyce Koerner and Adrienne Caspers never married, possibly due to the marriage bars that were in place.

After reading the articles, several people asked me, what was the marriage bar? What was the reasoning or justification behind it? How long did the bars last? Here is some basic information regarding them.

What was the marriage bar?

Although “marriage bar” is the terminology used to explain the discriminatory hiring against married women in the U.S. during the 1900s, there were two variations to the practice. First was the “hire bar,” which prevented the hiring of married women. The second was the “retain bar,” which prevented women from retaining their jobs if they married.

Interestingly, marriage bars affected primarily educated, middle- to upper-class women, particularly white women. The most-affected professions were teachers and clerical workers. Women of lower classes and women of color who worked in agriculture or as waitresses or as domestics often were not affected by marriage bars.

Justification 

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were several reasons given to justify the practice in the United States.

– Once women got married, they had a new and more important job: taking care of their husband and eventually raising their children. It was believed if the wife was working outside the home, she couldn’t fulfill her wifely duties.  Also, since their domestic responsibilities obviously would come first, that would make them less reliable for an employer.

– If a married woman was to work outside the home, she was stating that her husband couldn’t provide adequately for her or her family, thereby undermining his confidence and role as the sole provider for his family.

– If a married woman continued to work, she was also depriving someone else of a job who needed it more. This included married men with dependents, unmarried women and widows.

– If a married woman continued to work, it meant she wanted to lead an extravagant life by having extra “pin money” to spend beyond the family’s needs.

Author’s note: Pin money originally meant “small amounts of money women spent on fancy items.” But in the 1900s, the term evolved to mean money earned by a married woman.

Was a marriage bar a law? or were there variances by location or over the years? 

Although marriage bars were common across the U.S., they were less prevalent in certain areas. In many rural areas, there was a dire need for teachers, and married women were often hired to fulfill that role.

After the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression unfolded, the pressure for married women to not work outside the home intensified.

Frances Perkins, the New York Commissioner of Labor and future Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that New York faced a particular threat from married women with jobs.

“The woman ‘pin money” worker who competes with the necessity worker is a menace to society, a selfish, shortsighted creature, who ought to be ashamed of herself.  Until we have every woman in this community earning a living wage…I am not willing to encourage those who are under no economic necessities to compete with their charm and education, their superior advantages, against the working girl who has only her two hands.”

Perkins was not the only person who was concerned about the impact of married women in the workplace during this period. Discrimination against married women working in state government became law in 26 states by 1940.

The federal government even got into the fray. In Section 213 of the Economy Act of 1932, it required the government to fire one member of each married couple working for the government to provide jobs for other families. Since the wife was normally earning less, she was the one who lost her job. Section 213 was repealed five years later, in 1937, under immense pressure from women’s groups.  But the damage had already been done. Only 154 out of over 1,600 women who lost their jobs, were able to get their jobs back

Marriage bars also spread across other industries including insurance and banking, as the sentiment toward married women working continued throughout the Great Depression and into the early 1940s.

The belief that a white, middle-class, married woman should be working didn’t become socially acceptable until World War II. With the war, essential war jobs were opened to women. Most marriage bars and policies were repealed due to the shortage of a male labor force, as men went off to war.

Post World War II – 1964 Civil Rights Act

After World War II, the pressure on married working women increased once again, as men came home looking to return to the workforce. But women had proven their mettle during the war, and many retained their jobs. With the influx of money and opportunity for returning veterans via the GI Bill, and other government programs, the U.S. economy exploded, providing a wide range of new job opportunities for the entire work force.

But marriage bars to a lesser degree still existed in some places and business sectors until 1964, when the Civil Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate in this manner.

Author’s note: Some women got around marriage bars by not using their married names or stating that they were unmarried when hired. Others chose to not reveal the fact that they had gotten married, and therefore retained their jobs. However, if their deception was discovered, it often led to public disgrace.

This article was researched and written by Byron Wilkes. Thanks go to the Edmonds Historical Museum, Wikimedia and the Oregon Museum of Industry for their research assistance.