I have written to the BBC.
Hi there
I caught the end of the programme last night where your interviewee said
Irish women had to leave work when they got married
Irish women could not take out a bank loan without a male guarantor
Irish women had to leave work when they got married
This marriage bar applied to the civil service and in banks. But it did not apply to all employers.
Marriage bars were widespread and not just Irish
A Marriage Bar is the requirement that women working in certain jobs must leave that job when they marry. In the twentieth century, Marriage Bars were not unusual internationally. For example, they were in place in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United...
www.maynoothuniversity.ie
History in the United Kingdom
In the UK, the marriage bar was removed for all teachers and in the
BBC in 1944.
[15][16][17] The
BBC had a marriage bar between 1932 and 1944, although it was a partial ban and was not fully enforced due to the BBC's ambivalent views on the policy.
[18] Lloyds Bank utilized a marriage bar to classify married women as
supplementary staff rather than permanent until 1949, when the bank abolished its marriage bar.
[14]
Several other jobs in the UK had marriage bars until sometime in the 1970s, for example the
British Geological Survey until 1975.
[19] The marriage bar prohibited married women from joining the civil service. It was abolished in 1946 for the
Home Civil Service and in 1973 for the Foreign Service; until then women were required to resign when they married.
[20] Having a marriage bar was made illegal throughout the UK by the
Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
Irish women could not take out a bank loan without a male guarantor
I had never heard of this. I spoke to someone who started working in Bank of Ireland in 1964 and he had never heard of this.
Someone with a low income or no income who wanted to take out a loan would have needed someone on a higher income to guarantee it. A wife without income of her own would have needed a guarantor - probably her husband. But I would be fairly sure that there was no ban on women taking out loans if they had the means to repay them.
Brendan