Did women in Ireland need a guarantor to borrow money?

In a piece on BBC Radio 4 last night about Nell McCafferty an Irish Woman , sounded like "Mary McAlinden" said "Irish women had to leave work when they got married and could not get a bank loan without a male guarantor or rent a TV without a male guarantor".

There was a marriage bar in the civil service, but did it apply anywhere else?

I had not heard the bit about requiring a male guarantor before?

Anyone know how to check this out?

There have been widespread claims that Edna O'Brien's Country Girls was burnt but there is no evidence for it.

Brendan

I know my own mother was told she did not need a bank account back in the 60s as she was married and basically was told by the bank manager, does your husband not give you enough money. (We were farmers). Mortgage for a new house from the 70s was in Dad's name. Most women would not have been borrowing on their own and the expectation was that if they were single, and working, at some stage they would get married and then she'd have to give up working. Hence the guarantee

Brendan Burgess said:

There was a marriage bar in the civil service, but did it apply anywhere else?

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Marriage bars existed in some other large employers I think.

Marriage bars also existed in lots of other countries.

Many Irish feminists have a tendency to cherrypick the duration and severity of certain polices.

Dr Strangelove said:

Marriage bars existed in some other large employers I think.

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The only large private sector employer in my neck of the woods in the 70s and 80s certainly didn't have a marriage bar.

I have heard from the mother of a friend , years ago , that she had to leave her job in a bank when she got married. This article would suggest that it was common policy in banks

My mother was a stay at home mother but my parents had a joint bank acocunt. My Dad had to kick off and insist that the bank give my mother access to the account. She was refused a small credit union loan in the 80s without Dad guaranteeing , but she had no independent income eexcept the childrens allowance,

Sounds like it was true in the US


1974: Equal Credit Opportunity Act passes in the US. Until then, banks required single, widowed or divorced women to bring a man along to cosign any credit application, regardless of their income. They would also discount the value of those wages when considering how much credit to grant, by as much as 50%.

Great article. Nothing in it about women not being able to get bank loans.

She was from the North. In those days TVs were substantially cheaper in the North, and smuggling a TV down to the South was not an unknown activity! They even sold TVs with VHF tuners in the North, so they would work with the Phoenix/RTE Relay/Cablelink etc in Dublin.
So my question is, why was she renting a expensive TV in the South?

T McGibney said:

The only large private sector employer in my neck of the woods in the 70s and 80s certainly didn't have a marriage bar.

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Well no employer could operate a marriage bar after 1974.

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

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

Dr Strangelove said:

Well no employer could operate a marriage bar after 1974.

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Brendan Burgess said:

Having a marriage bar was made illegal throughout the UK by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.

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Did we outlaw the marriage bar before the UK?

It is correct that a wife could not obtain a loan without her husband going guarantor.
My experience. 1986- We took out a mortgage and needed a bank loan to bring the amount up to the asking price of the house. We had no savings but were both working in a Semi- State organisation. The mortgage broker knew the manager in AIB Grafton Street so we were sent there and given a loan. Although I was earning more than my husband the bank wanted his signature guaranteeing the loan. I was feisty back then and was horrified. When we had the loan and they were still looking for the signature I made an appointment to see them and told them that I was not going to get my husband to sign. We never heard anything more from them.

Marriage bar certainly applied in the banks. I recall working for an Irish bank in the early noughties and any female staff I had over a certain age (heading for retirement) were single. Ireland was one of the last countries in Europe to remove it

Interesting article here

It should also be remembered that families were much larger back then and childcare outside the home was largely non-existant.

Oddly enough I dealt with a case a few years ago where in the mid 80s a woman took over her deadbeat husband's share of a house and also his share of the mortgage, which almost matched the value of the house.

So that certainly was possible.

T McGibney said:

Oddly enough I dealt with a case a few years ago where in the mid 80s a woman took over her deadbeat husband's share of a house and also his share of the mortgage, which almost matched the value of the house.

So that certainly was possible.

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It was changing at that stage, more women in 3rd level, more women in roles like teaching but if you go back to the 60s and into the 70's, far different.

There were some exceptions, my granny was widowed in her 40's and she managed the farm despite that and I presume had an account. Likewise, there would have been a lot of women whose husbands were working away, especially in places like Donegal so maybe it was different from a practical perspective. Having said that, it was also largely a cash economy and I also remember my Mam cashing my father's pay cheque from a job he had in the local supermarket with no issues.

10amwalker said:

It is correct that a wife could not obtain a loan without her husband going guarantor.

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Yes. I am since been told that a man was liable for his wife's debts.

But I don't think that single women needed a guarantor.

Brendan

Irish Life operated a marriage bar, I worked with a woman who had to leave the company after marriage.

T McGibney said:

Oddly enough I dealt with a case a few years ago where in the mid 80s a woman took over her deadbeat husband's share of a house and also his share of the mortgage, which almost matched the value of the house.

So that certainly was possible.

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I have paperwork with the deads of my house were the husband disappeared to England in the 70s and his wife took over ownership of the house and mortgage. My solicitor was not impressed that all the paperwork was included with the deads.

Closer to home, my grandmother widowed by 1950 ran her own company, employing over 20-30 people and bought and sold property as a side line. We came across some paperwork clearing the house. Applications for different loans with detailed business plans etc. She had a favourite manager with BOI she used for years. She used to tell me she was a business woman ahead of her time. With stories of going into builder providers lists of items and bargaining the price down, saying they were not used to dealing with a Woman.

Marriage bar was in a lot of places, it was removed for teachers in 1958 in Ireland but continued for a lot of other jobs until I think 1974 just a few years before I started in the bank. It is no coincidence that my mother, a primary teacher, did not get married until 1958 when she was 28 which was old enough then to be marrying! She actually had been engaged to a German man before that and intending moving to Germany where there was no marriage ban on teachers but thought again about the difficulties and didn't go ahead. She had worked very hard through scholarships/rationing etc to become a teacher and had no notion of giving it up!

I know of another colleague of my mothers who moved to US in mid fifties to escape having to leave her job on marriage.

T McGibney said:

The only large private sector employer in my neck of the woods in the 70s and 80s certainly didn't have a marriage bar.

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The 'marriage bar' ended in 1973.