Analysis: The Conditions of Employment Act 1936 was one of several ways women faced discrimination and segregation in the workplace for decades
'The act ensured that where women were employed, it was frequently in a highly segregated and subordinated setting.' Photo: Dr. Paul Wolff & Tritschler/Corbis via Getty Images
By Deirdre Foley, TCD
In the first few decades of Irish independence, the enduring concept of a 'family wage' was central to the rationale for gender discrimination in the workplace. Discrimination was embodied in the marriage bar and the imposition of further restrictions on female employment via the Conditions of Employment Act, 1936.
In a speech made the year this legislation was passed, the future bishop of Cork, Cornelius Lucey, presented the increased employment of women in industry as a deterrent to marriage, stating that ‘more women out at work meant more men out of work.’ Female employment in the industrial sector (ie factory jobs) increased during the 1920s and 1930s, but not exponentially, and there was a greater increase in the clerical category of employment for women in this period.
Nevertheless, concern was focused on the lowest-paid jobs and the perceived threat to the male breadwinner was most acute among the working class.In Dublin’s inner city, for example, male employment on the docks was sporadic and unreliable. Consequently, families often depended on the income of wives and daughters, who were increasingly in factory employment, to stay above the breadline. Marriage bars rarely applied in factories, signalling the reality that many women did contribute to the family income, albeit on a very low wage.
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From RTÉ Archives, a 1968 report on the changing nature of Irish industry and the place of women in the workforce
Section 16 of the Conditions of Employment Act, 1936 enabled the Minister for Industry and Commerce (who, when the Act was passed, was Seán Lemass), to bar women from specified areas of industrial work. While section 16 was never enforced in any meaningful way, its mere presence was an insidious legal embodiment of the state's gendered attitude towards paid work.
Section 46 restricted women’s capacity to engage in shift work, as it prohibited them from commencing work before 8am, and banned night work for women. These provisions were also promoted globally by the International Labour Organisation via its Night Work Convention No. 89, as a protectionist measure for women and children. The act was supported by all Irish trade unions, with the telling exception of the Irish Women Workers’ Union.
In a society which prized the male breadwinner, and where unemployment was rising, the legislation was described by Labour senator, Thomas Farren, as ‘a question of trying to preserve some of the men's jobs for the men’. One of the first exceptions from this legislation was made as soon as it was passed in 1936. A statutory instrument was passed to allow women ‘employed to do the cleaning of any place where industrial work is carried on’ to start work from 6.30am.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, how did the marriage bar affect Irish women?
At the beginning of the 1960s, as more women remained at work until the birth of their first child, the pool of cheap labour grew. The Minister for Industry and Commerce issued an increasing number of exclusion orders during this decade, creating loopholes to exclude certain factories and industries from adhering fully to section 46 of the Conditions of Employment Act.
For example, in 1962 the minister permitted the employment of women between the hours of 6am and 10pm in the woollen industry at Foxford, Co. Mayo. Similarly, orders were passed allowing women to work longer shifts in the paper bag, plastics and cosmetics industries.
Where exceptions were not implemented, work was particularly segregated. At Guinness in the early 1960s, there was a proposal to employ women instead of boys at the brewery’s bottling plant. This was eventually shelved for reasons that demonstrate the barriers to integrating female staff in a male-dominated environment. Files show concern regarding the hours women could work under section 46, as well as the cut in supply of boy workers, many of whom went on to a career in the brewery. The potential for male breadwinners was thus prioritised.
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From RTÉ Archives, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera addresses the nation on the inauguration of the new constitution in 1937
Section 46 was not repealed until 1987, when the Minister for Labour, Bertie Ahern, implemented the Employment Equality (Employment of Women) Order, 1986. The long-term domestic consequences of the Conditions of Employment Act, coupled with the marriage bar, were the prolonged segregation of many workplaces, and the continued relegation of women to the domestic sphere.
While it may not have directly curtailed the overall rate of female employment, the act ensured that where women were employed, it was frequently in a highly segregated and subordinated setting. In 1962, 22% of women were in occupations where women accounted for 90% or more of all persons, and 36% of women were in occupations where women accounted for 70% or more of all persons.
In a front-page interview with the New York Times in May 1937, Éamon de Valera refuted the widely discussed notion that the new Constitution would place further restriction on women’s employment, and repeated his insistence that Article 41.2 would protect their interests. '"There is no barrier put to women’s voluntarily choosing any vocation", he said. "What is insisted on is that economic pressure should not compel them to engage in injurious occupations against their will." Considering the restrictions already in place via the marriage bar, and the Conditions of Employment Act, his claim was limited in its veracity even before the Constitution was enacted.
Dr Deirdre Foley is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Her current research is on Irish women’s working lives, 1965-1990. If you are interested in sharing your experiences for this project, please email dfoley6@tcd.ie.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
