The Middy, June17 1999

From kitchen to boardroom and beyond

In 1945, fearing unemployment, policymakers stressed the importance of full-time motherhood, threatening the direst outcome for "latchkey children.”

Children of working mothers were not prioritised for daycare or nursery education – 50% of wartime nurseries had closed by 1955.

Some women have enjoyed their taste of the boardroom; Miss Nathanson, a retired department store clothes buyer now living in Hurstpierpoint was "hopping mad" when directors tipped her out of her store manager’s job and suggested she go back behind the counter.

20 years later she was the highest paid store buyer in Britain.

By 1947 an economic survey recorded the prospective labour force fell "substantially short" of that required to reach national production objectives.

The Ministry of Labour appealed to "women who are in a position to do so to enter industry.”

In Sussex, practical women got on with their jobs of caring for families; helping out with home-based businesses such as farming and frequently taking on a job outside the home as well.

A classic example is Joan Marsh who qualified as a nurse, then a midwife before marrying her dairy – farmer husband Vic Marsh after the war and moving to West End Farm in Burgess Hill.

Joan volunteered to help nurse smallpox victims in Dartford in 1955. When her three children were born and the family needed the money she started up a riding school which became the county's most respected "Equestrian Academy.”

She said: “there was no such thing as women's or men's work; when the cattle needed milking you just got on with it.”

Gladys Bunn’s life proved able women women in every generation could overcome prejudice if they worked hard enough.

Born in 1921, she left school at 13, enrolled as a clerk with the South Suburban Co-Operative Society, cycling 12 miles to work each day for 11s a week.

After wartime service with the Ministry of Mines, marriage and the birth of her daughter, Gladys took up the reins of the co-opted movement again – this time the youth arm – while helping set up a new residential estate agency.

When the family moved to Ardingly she was nominated to the Co-operative Southern Regional Board, became chairman of the cooperative college and was then elected to the Manchester-based National executive: "the best time of my life" working on labour relations, education and arbitration.

Gladys also served on the International Council of the world cooperative movement; "the only non-governmental organisation working with both the USSR and USA throughout the Cold War."

A third career – 25 years as a magistrate – then a fourth; running the association newly formed to administer former local authority housing stock in 1989 – Led to her chairmanship until last year of the downland housing group with its five subdivisions.

Her philosophy? "Commitment; I can't be a cardboard member.”

The 1944 Education Act (which incidentally achieved equal pay for male and female teachers there by one vote) made it a legal requirement for children to be in full Time education – up until that time fee paying schools, girls public schools or home education were the option of the well off.

A well-known local example was set up in 1882 in a large farmhouse on the road leading out of Ditchling towards the Common by sisters May, Edith and Mary Dumbrell who started Dumbrells School after their father died in a hunting accident on the Downs.

Former pupil between 1940 to 1947 Josephine Ferguson remembers sitting on a fallen tree trunk wearing a sunbonnet and struggling with "returned" algebra, looking towards an orchard in which soldiers were camped awaiting D-Day.

Former Dumbrells pupils went on to achieve fame of one sort or another: Angela Goodenough was Chief Wren during World War II; Camilla Shand attended before almost marrying Prince Charles.

Most girls receive the whole of their education in an elementary school with a change of floor to mark progressing to a higher class.

A pioneering experiment in education for girls took place with the foundation in 1906 of the PNEU – Parents National Education Union – school by Charlotte Nathan.

She took the Revolutionary view that "Girls have as much right to a full education as boys" and nine apprehensive children attended on the school's first day.

Now Burgess Hill School, it numbers more than 600 pupils from the ages of 3 to 18 and regularly tops county league performance tables.

With grammar schools open to girls and boys of all social classes after World War II women realised they could now compete on equal terms.

The result has been a gradual increase in confidence shown by girls outperforming boys in public examinations in almost every sphere.

During the 60s, 70s and 80s, women were recruited into fast-growing sectors of financial services and information technology; Britain's rather than brawn were now at a premium.

Helping smooth the path into the workplace were 20th-century inventions like the vacuum cleaner (1910); the toaster and the Brillo pad (1913); food processor (1918); zip (1919); hairdryer and refrigerator (1925); steam iron (1928); frozen food 1935); Dettol, (1932); sliced bread (1933); nylons(1938); detergent (early 1950s); rubber gloves (1952); teabags (1953),; nonstick pans (1954); the contraceptive pill and disposable nappies (1956) and finally lycra (1959).

In the Mid Sussex Times over the years job advertisements for shop assistance, girls to help out with childcare and secretaries gradually evolved into recruitment ad for programmers, VDU operators, professional drivers, teachers, care workers and nurses.

Rather than criminalise choice by gender, the sex Discrimination Act in 1975 triggered a sea change in attitude.

The 1991 Census shows nearly 14,000 female managers and administrators in West Sussex, more than a third of the total.

In East Sussex the percentage is even higher with 12,641 representing more than a half of the counties workforce of managers.

Women form two thirds of the clerical workforce in both East and West Sussex.

They also feature in healthy numbers, in previously male dominated fields like Science and Engineering (More than one third of agricultural managers and farm administrators (1/3 and 1/4 of legal professionals.

Female labour comprises a quarter of sales representatives and only just under one third of health professionals.

Now no well qualified young woman need hesitate over her application to become an industrial chemist, civil engineer, forensic scientist or senior police officer.