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A marriage bar is the practice of restricting the employment of Marital status. Common in English-speaking countries from the late 19th century to the 1970s, the practice often called for the termination of the employment of a woman on her marriage, especially in teaching and clerical occupations. Further, widowed women with children were still considered to be married at times, preventing them from being hired, as well.
The practice lacked an economic justification, and its rigid application was often disruptive to workplaces. However, marriage bars were widely relaxed in wartime due to an increase in the demand for labor. Research carried out by Claudia Goldin to explore their determinants using firm-level data from 1931 and 1940, find out that they are associated with promotion from within, tenure-based salaries, and other modern personnel practices.
Since the 1960s, the practice has widely been regarded as employment inequality and sexual discrimination, and has been either discontinued or outlawed by anti-discrimination laws. In the Netherlands, the marriage bar was removed in 1957, in Australia it was removed in 1966, and in Ireland it was removed in 1973. The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition, by Tito Boeri, Jan van Ours, pp. 105
To avoid seemingly discriminatory practices, many employers utilized marriage bars to classify married women as supplementary staff, rather than permanent. This was the case, for example, at Lloyds Bank until 1949, when the bank abolished its marriage bar. Classifying women as supplementary, rather than full-time staff, allowed employers to avoid paying women fixed salaries and to terminate women's employment more easily.
Several other jobs in the UK had marriage bars until sometime in the 1970s, for example the British Geological Survey until 1975. 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. Having a marriage bar was made illegal throughout the UK by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
While common throughout the United States, the marriage bar was relaxed in certain geographical areas and time periods. Contrary to urban areas, rural areas often needed teachers so they were willing to hire married women. Marriage bars were less strict during World War I because women were needed in the assistance of war efforts. At the beginning of World War II, 87% of school boards would not hire married women and 70% would not retain a single woman who married. But in 1951, only 18% of the school boards had the "hire bar" and 10% had the "retain bar".
Marriage bars generally affected educated, middle-class married women, particularly native-born white women. Their occupations were that of teaching and clerical work. Lower class women and women of color who took jobs in manufacturing, waitressing, and Domestic worker were often unaffected by marriage bars. Discrimination against married female teachers in the US was not terminated until 1964 with the passing of the Civil Rights Act.
Marriage bars were connected to social and economic fluctuations, as well, especially after the end of World War I. Returning servicemen who wanted jobs, and afterwards the Great Depression in the 1930s, led to the implementation of marriage bars in many professions. However, marriage bars were often justified on tradition, especially in places where there was a very strong tradition of married women as caretakers.
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