Why did so many extraordinary women die unmarried and without children — could it have been the marriage bar?

By Roselyn Fauth

Why did so many extraordinary women in our history remain unmarried and without children?
As I’ve dug through Timaru’s archives, I’ve noticed a pattern... teachers, nurses, writers, inventors... women who shaped our communities in remarkable ways — and yet so many of them never married or had children. Why?

Was it by choice? Circumstance? Or by law?

It turns out, there really was a law. In 1931, during the Great Depression, the New Zealand Government passed the Finance Act 1931 (No 4). Hidden deep in the Education section was Section 39 — “Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers.” The marriage bar required women to resign from their jobs upon marriage or prevented married women from being hired. This “marriage bar” forced thousands to choose between marriage and career — and it wasn’t unique to New Zealand; similar rules existed in Australia, Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands, UK (including colonies like New Zealand through shared civil service structures).

When I first read the clause, my stomach dropped. But then another thought followed: were people, in their time, trying to solve a different problem — spreading scarce work during a crisis — and not seeing what it would cost women?

Here is a blog of my history hunt that took me from William Downie Stewart Jr’s Depression-era pragmatism to Arthur Kinsella’s post-war modernisation... and tuaght me that it was'nt just sopcial norms that shaped the way women lived, but lawes have had a profound impact on women. My reflection on economic depression policies to “free up jobs for men”) and moral expectations (to keep married women at home...

Must a woman... give it all up when she marries?

The rule makers who impacted women. This is an 1875 elevation drawing of Wellington's neoclassical-style Government Buildings by its architect, William Clayton. It was erected the following year in wood fashioned to look like stone. The four-storey building became an immediate landmark, and the claim that it was the largest wooden building in the world became a Wellington refrain. Historians suggest it is actually the largest wooden office building. It initially housed all the government executive – ministers and their departments – but within a few years the executive had outgrown the building and new space was required. In 1996 it became Victoria University of Wellington's law school. - Alexander Turnbull Library. Reference: D-016-006 by William Henry Clayton. Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

A rule that made women choose

A marriage bar required women in certain jobs that were thought of as respectable women’s work such as teachers, clerks, nakers, and public servants — to leave their positions when they married. In 1931, Parliament wrote New Zealand’s version into law in Part 3 (Education amendments) of the Finance Act, with Section 39 empowering boards to terminate the employment of married women teachers. It stayed on the statute book until 1965, when it was repealed by the Education Act 1964, and the Act itself was later repealed in 2017’s tidy-up of old laws.

If you want to feel how it landed at the time, the newspapers tell the story vividly. In August 1931, the Supreme Court ruled that boards could refuse to hire married women but could not dismiss those already employed — a technical win that triggered calls for stronger legislation. Within weeks, ministers were signalling new powers so boards could dismiss married women already on staff. The headlines said it all:
“Married Women Teachers — Dismissal Power Not Given” (Hawera Star, 4 Aug 1931) and later “Dismissal of Teachers — Power for Education Boards” (Wanganui Chronicle, 28 Oct 1931). Each one feels like a door closing.

I try to imagine the arguments made in board rooms and Cabinet: Policymakers justified it as protecting male breadwinners and preserving family life.. jobs were scarce, households needed income, so one job per family maybe sounded fair. The “family wage” idea said a man’s pay should support a wife and children. In that frame, asking a married woman to step aside was presented as economic fairness — a way to place single teachers who had no other means. I can almost hear the relief of a young unemployed teacher getting that vacancy. Was this bar also based on the assumption that women’s primary role was domestic and reproductive, not professional?

I also try to image how many women may have felt then: Did fairness measured by household came at a human cost. The bar turned marriage into a professional trap, pushed skilled women out at their peak, and made them economically dependent. Economists today would call that human capital loss — training and experience thrown away. And notice that equality ran one way: men were never required to resign when they married. That asymmetry tells the real story.

The bar forced women to choose between marriage and career, limiting long-term earnings, seniority, and pension rights. Reading through various resources I have learned that many women hid their marriages or delayed them to retain employment. The result I think was a generational gap... few older women in professional or senior roles, and an undervaluing of female experience.

The Education Act 1964 (No.135) is the Act under which the conditional authority to terminate married women’s employment (s39 of the 1931 Act) was repealed. The legal framing in the 1964 Act reflects a broad overhaul of education governance, rather than a targeted gender-employment reform. This is Section 39 — Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers (Part 3 — Education Amendment)

39. Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers

(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Education Act 1914 or in any other Act, it shall be lawful for the controlling authority of any public school, with the approval of the Minister, to terminate the employment of any woman teacher who, after the commencement of this section, marries.

(2) Nothing in this section shall apply to any woman who, at the time of her marriage, is employed in any position as a teacher that the Minister certifies to be a position for which, by reason of the special duties attached thereto, it is desirable that she should continue to be employed notwithstanding her marriage.

(3) The Governor-General may from time to time, by Order in Council, make regulations prescribing the circumstances in which the approval of the Minister may be given under this section, and generally providing for such matters as may be necessary for the purpose of giving full effect to the provisions of this section.

According to historical overviews (e.g., the Women’s Studies Association New Zealand journal) the marriage bar had already been weakening in practice by the late 1930s and especially during wartime, when married women were needed in the workforce. This clause was later repealed on 15 October 1965 by section 204(1) of the Education Act 1964 (1964 No 135), formally ending the legal authority to dismiss married women teachers in New Zealand. The repeal fits into a global pattern of marriage bars being abandoned as labour needs changed, social norms shifted, and discrimination laws evolved.

The change may have happened because of labour market pressures. By the 1940s and 1950s, teaching shortages and changing workforce needs made the bar impractical. Maybe there was an ideological change where the belief that married women should leave paid work gradually lost social legitimacy. The “one wage per family” model weakened as more families needed two incomes. Perhaps there was legal reform momentum due to broader anti-discrimination attitudes and legal structures started taking hold globally. The removal of explicit statutory barriers followed. And perhaps it was the result of an administrative review and simplification when the 1964 Act reorganised education governance, and in doing so cleaned up older, outdated clauses — including this one.

The bar declined after World War II, as women’s wartime work proved their capability and economic necessity. Legal reforms, union pressure, and social change led to its abolition across most Western countries by the 1960s–1970s.

In the United States, the 1964 Civil Rights Act ended discrimination against married women teachers. By outlawing discrimination based on sex, the act forced local school districts to treat married female teachers as they treated their married male counterparts. At last, boards began to follow the course education reformers had recommended fifty years earlier: basing their hiring decisions on ability alone.

Parliament Grounds, Wellington] (1920s to 1930s) by Roland Searle.

What New Zealand looked like then

Marriage carried immense social and economic weight. As Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand explains, married couples enjoyed tax and property advantages; “family” benefits were tied to marital status; men’s higher wages were justified because they were presumed to support wives and children. Divorce was rare and socially difficult.

Meanwhile, unemployment was high. Teacher graduates struggled to find work. Officials presented the marriage bar as practical economics, not malice. For many, it felt like common sense in hard times.

Did this structural kindness have unintended harm? This is where I sit with mixed feelings. Sometimes systems are designed as a kind of structural kindness — a policy meant to protect households — yet they narrow choices for the very people they claim to help. Good intentions can still fence people in. The marriage bar did that to women.

Historians like Jo Aitken show how the bar also reflected the ideology of domesticity — the belief that a married woman’s proper place was in the home. Economic logic and social expectation worked together, and the law gave that ideology teeth.

I doesn't look like New Zealand was alone. Across Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and the UK, the same logic repeated: “economic necessity” first, women’s independence second. Many gifted women stayed single simply to keep the work they loved.

The state funeral procession of Prime Minister William Massey leaves Parliament on a suitably misty Wellington day in 1925. This view from Government Buildings showcases the parliamentary complex, from left: old Government House (then housing Bellamy's, the parliamentary caterers); the half-completed Parliament House and the General Assembly Library.

Here is some interesting reading to help you get your head around this curious question...

Court to decide — July 1931: Is dismissal lawful under the Finance Act? A first test case lands in the Supreme Court.

Young women teachers — August 1931: The ruling disappoints unemployed graduates; they press for “special legislation” so posts held by married women will fall vacant.

New powers promised — October 1931: Ministers tell boards to expect authority to dismiss married women already on staff.

Seen through today’s eyes, singleness becomes not an absence but a stance. All those “spinsters” in the archives weren’t lacking; they were holding a line — teaching, nursing, organising — choosing calling over convention in a system that asked them to disappear. What history once labelled “spinsterhood” might, more truthfully, be called sovereignty.

Was it intentionally sexist?

I often wonder about intent. Part of me can see the logic of the time — trying to ensure every household had an income during the Depression. Maybe, for some, it wasn’t intended as cruelty at all.

But understanding intent doesn’t excuse impact. Even well-meaning laws can limit lives.

The marriage bar closed doors. It told brilliant women — teachers who kept classes running, clerks who balanced the books, public servants who kept the country functioning — that once they married, they no longer belonged at work. Even when enforcement softened, the shadow lingered for years.

A fair reading is to see the bar as a product of its time that solved one problem (unemployment) by deepening another (inequality). It reminds me that not every injustice begins with malice; sometimes it begins with a tidy idea nobody challenges hard enough.

The marriage bar was not an accident. It was a policy of social control exported through colonial administrative systems.

It defined “modern” womanhood within the British imperial moral code, aligning work and marriage with patriarchal norms.

So, back to the question... Why did so many remarkable women remain unmarried and without children?

I can’t claim one answer for every life. And I can only reflect with the lived experience and a little knowledge gained about the issues women faced a century ago... so I think the marriage bar helps explain why some women faced a choice, career or family. I imagine for countless women, the choice may have felt stark: marry and lose your career, or stay single and keep your calling.

Looking back helps me see the present with clearer eyes. I’m grateful for the gains in equality, choice and opportunity that let me be a working mother in Timaru today. I’m also honest that the juggle is real. Some weeks I ask, what is essential right now? Often the answer is simple: raise good humans, be a good neighbour, tell our stories. Leave the world better than I found it. I realise that sometimes I can't do everything, be everything, at the same time. In our household while our girls are young, my priority is in the home, and what else I can squeeze into my day is a bonus to the essential. It fills my cup, makes me feel valued, gives me a way to belong and contribute. We may not have the income to to do all and have all the things, so my husband and I keep things simple. Probably why I have become so passionate about finding free fun and helping to make it accessable fun and meaningful. 

Today, echoes of the marriage bar survive in gentler guises. I have talked a few friends and no one so far knew this once even existed. There are no monuments to national days off, just the impacts we still challenge today like gender pay gaps, unpaid care, and in assumptions about who will “step back” when life gets busy. I’m grateful to the women and men who fought for our freedoms — and mindful we’re not done. When women thrive, communities thrive. That isn’t a slogan; it’s something I see every day.

It reveals how colonial and capitalist structures controlled reproduction and labour—who could earn, who could marry, and who could belong to the public sphere. Bureaucracy became a tool of colonial patriarchy.

 I haven't been able to find any particular champion who stood up and shouted ‘end the marriage bar!’ Instead, the change has probably come about because the world changed: wartime shortages forced policy shifts, young women remained in classrooms, and the economic logic of one-wage families weakened. By the time the 1964 Act wiped the clause away, the marriage bar was already losing its power. It reminds me that sometimes histories of change aren’t about grand gestures — but about quiet accumulation of pressure, decision-by-decision, decade-by-decade.

Why was there silence on this topic? 

Maybe because it was “normal,” it rarely provoked public outrage or protest at the time? This silence probably mirrors other forms of colonisation that worked through everyday habits, not only violence. I think this blog and the writing of so many others is important to help us reingage and revisit the past with today's lens to help us understand how ordinary rules built lasting inequities.

It challenges us to look for modern equivalents... policies that quietly limit participation under the guise of tradition or efficiency.

I think through storytelling, this can be a way to connect women’s history, colonial systems, and economic justice and help to turn invisible discrimination into visible and more understood impact. We can learn from this to know where we have come from, know who we are, and be able to make better choices for the future.

“It is not in our nature to rest content with inequality.” — Kate Sheppard

Timaru Girls High School around c1915 with girls posted in groups in front of the main school building. South Canterbury Museum 2009/108.01. The schools motto is Motto, Scientia Potestas Est (knowledge is power) as a common seal. This was taken from Francis Bacon’s “Religious Meditation’ 1597. It opened for lessons on Monday 2 February 1880 as a co-educational secondary school located on Cain and Hassall Streets. The day saw 35 girls and 28 boys. (Aged from 13 to 19 years old). Classes were to begin at 10am and finish at 4pm. The first school building constructed in 1880 by Mr James Gore of Dunedin.  Following a major fire in 1898, if officially split into two single-sex schools on the same site, with girls remaining at the original location. In 1913 Timaru Boys' High School moved to North Street. Miss Mary McLean Principal for the Girls had been a student of the school in the past. The first women to graduate from the School both studied medicine; Dr Elizabeth Gunn (Otago University) and Dr A Balfour from (Edinburgh University). Post WWII saw a massive increase in roll and the buildings that were added to site were constructed. In 1963, Timaru Girls’ High School became the largest girl's school in The South Island with a Roll of 771. (Source Timaru Girls High Archives)

By enforcing “respectable womanhood,” the bar helped reproduce British ideals of civilisation, family, and gender hierarchy in colonies.

It policed class and race as well as gender—privileging white middle-class women while ignoring or exploiting Indigenous and working-class women’s labour.

Timaru, New Zealand, circa 1910, Timaru, by William Ferrier, F.W. Hutton & Co. Gift of Lord Kitchener, 1960. Te Papa (AL.000566)

The idea that women must leave work when they marry has persisted beyond the policy, and it has continued through pay gaps, pension rules, and social attitudes. The marriage bar is a reminder that discrimination can be systemic without being loud.

Side Quest who was the minister at the time? Arthur Kinsella: The Teacher Who Became Minister of Education

Arthur Ellis Kinsella (1918–2004) was not just a politician — he was a teacher first. Born in Waikino, New Zealand, Kinsella trained at Auckland Teachers’ College and earned a Master of Arts and a Diploma in Education before serving overseas with the New Zealand Engineers during the Second World War. His wartime experience shaped his sense of public service, discipline, and duty — qualities that would later define his approach to education policy. After returning home, he entered Parliament in 1954 as the National Party MP for Hauraki, representing a region that balanced rural values with growing industrial ambitions. He carried into government a belief that education was the key to modern nation-building.

By the time Kinsella became Minister of Education in 1963, New Zealand was undergoing immense social and economic transformation. The post-war baby boom had created classroom overcrowding and a chronic shortage of trained teachers. Kinsella extended teacher training from two to three years, improved teacher housing, and worked to reduce class sizes — reforms that signalled a push toward professionalism and long-term investment in education. While he is not remembered as a crusader for women’s rights, his tenure coincided with a quiet but crucial shift: the formal repeal of the 1931 Finance Act’s “Marriage Bar” clause, which had once allowed schools to dismiss married women teachers. Under his ministry, the Education Act 1964 modernised the law, bringing it into line with the reality of the classroom, where many women were already working and teaching after marriage.

Kinsella’s years in office reflected the values and tensions of his time. He came from a generation that valued stability, service, and order, yet he governed during a decade when traditional assumptions — about family, gender, and work — were rapidly evolving. His reforms helped professionalise teaching and expand educational opportunity, setting the stage for a more equitable system. While his ministry did not set out to make feminist history, it nonetheless helped close one of the quieter chapters of institutionalised gender inequality. Looking back, his story reminds me that progress doesn’t always come from protest or revolution. Sometimes, it comes from steady reformers — those who see that a system must grow to match the people it serves.

Arthur Kinsella taken by Spencer Digby / Ronald D Woolf Collection. Gift of Ronald Woolf, 1975# (15 January 1918 – 4 March 2004) was a New Zealand politician of the National Party, and was a cabinet minister. After his retirement from politics, he was a business consultant before his return to teaching as Principal of the Technical Correspondence Institute.

MARRIED WOMEN TEACHERS
Northern Advocate, 4 August 1931, Page 4 paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/NA19310804.2.33

In 1931, during the height of the Depression, school boards across Aotearoa tried to enforce a marriage bar — a rule that would force women teachers to resign upon marriage. Justice Herdman’s decision made it clear: the law allowed boards to refuse to hire married women in future, but not to sack those already employed. For hundreds of women teachers, this judgment meant immediate job security (at least for a time) and it became a pivotal legal moment in New Zealand’s struggle over women’s right to work after marriage.

Star (Christchurch), 13 March 1930, p. 4 — “Protest is Made at Timaru Conference”

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/TS19300313.2.32 

“The following supplementary remit from Otago was carried unanimously by the South Island Federation of School Committees’ Associations at the annual conference yesterday:—
That we protest against the employment of married women teachers when their husbands are in employment, and that the Act be amended to make such employment illegal.”
“The latter part of the motion was added after a discussion in which all the delegates spoke in favour of the remit…”
“The following remit from Canterbury was withdrawn:— That the employment of female teachers whose husbands are earning sufficient salary to keep them, be not approved of by the conference, and that strong representations be made to the Department in support of the protests made by the various Education Boards of New Zealand.”

This meeting took place in Timaru, hosted by the South Island Federation of School Committees’ Associations, which represented parent and community voices.

While North Canterbury teachers (see Timaru Herald, 16 May 1930) defended married women’s right to work, the committees meeting in Timaru voted unanimously for the opposite: to make such employment illegal.

The debate shows a clear regional divide within Canterbury — Timaru and Otago committees reflecting social conservatism and Depression-era fears of job scarcity, versus North Canterbury educators defending equality and professional merit.

Timaru Herald, 3 April 1935, p. 5 — “The Education Act Amendment: Views of Member for Timaru”

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/THD19350403.2.23 

“It is a vexed question, I know,” said the member for Timaru. “It is a difficult question to deal with, without being torn between conflicting emotions and authorities and parties. Much is to be said on both sides.”
“In these difficult times conditions have been created … that make it so difficult for anybody to get a job, that if husband and wife are both earning money, everybody is after them like a pack of wolves. It ought not to be so.”
“I believe in the economic independence of women. I believe that a woman has as much right to earn her living as a man, and earn it in her own way, be she married or single.”
“The best teachers I ever had were married women teachers. A woman who has children of her own, and who understands children, is, as a rule, far better qualified to deal with children than is the unmarried woman.”
“I do not like to see a woman put out of a job just because she happens to be married, or even because her husband is earning and she is earning.”

This is one of the most progressive parliamentary statements from a Timaru MP on women’s employment in the 1930s.
Reverend Clyde Carr, Labour member for Timaru, not only defended married women’s right to work, but linked it directly to economic independence, teaching quality, and social justice.

Carr’s words counterbalanced the earlier 1930 Timaru conference protests, showing how the region’s political representation had evolved — from exclusionary remits to advocacy for equality and compassion in law.

In contrast, William Downie Stewart Jr was The Minister Behind the Marriage Bar Era

When the Finance Act 1931 (No 4) was passed, William Downie Stewart Jr (1878–1949) was New Zealand’s Minister of Finance — a lawyer, historian, and politician whose career was defined by a deep concern for economic stability during one of the nation’s darkest financial crises. Born in Dunedin and educated at Otago Boys’ High School and the University of Otago, Stewart was a meticulous thinker and a man of principle. By 1931, the world was deep in the Great Depression, unemployment was soaring, and the government was under immense pressure to cut spending and balance the books. Stewart’s budget decisions, though austere, were guided by what he saw as the grim necessity of the time: to preserve the financial integrity of the nation at all costs.

It was within this context that the Finance Act 1931 (No 4) — and with it, Section 39, the clause allowing the dismissal of married women teachers — was enacted. While the clause now reads as discriminatory, it was conceived in an era obsessed with spreading scarce employment among as many households as possible. The logic went that if a married woman left her teaching job, another family — perhaps one with an unemployed husband — could have an income. It was an economic, not moral, policy — born of desperation, not ideology. In the public service and teaching sectors, women who married were often considered “secondary earners” or “supplementary staff,” so removing them from full employment seemed, at the time, a rational way to share limited work.

Stewart himself was no social radical, but nor was he cruel. He saw the state as a stabilising force, one that had to make difficult trade-offs to keep the country solvent. As a trained lawyer and historian, he understood precedent and order; social progress was not his focus — survival was. Yet, by authorising laws that embedded gendered assumptions into employment, his ministry inadvertently shaped decades of lost opportunity for women teachers. It’s hard to imagine the intent was malice; more likely it was a product of economic panic and cultural blind spots. Reflecting on Stewart’s role reminds me how even well-intentioned policy can have unforeseen consequences — and how important it is that compassion, not just caution, shapes the choices of those who govern.

Left: William Downie Stewart MP 1922 By Unknown photographer - http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23214616, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50633702 Right: William Downie Stewart, November 1932. Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand Free Lance Collection (PAColl-0785) Reference: PAColl-6388-48

Is this for real? This was provided to me by the Timaru Girls High Archives. I have tried to find the original source, but haven't had much success. There are lots of blogs online that discuss the authenticity...  “The rules from 1872 have been variously attributed to an 1872 posting in Monroe County, Iowa; to a one-room school in a small town in Maine; and to an unspecified Arizona schoolhouse. The 1915 rules are attributed to a Sacramento teachers’ contract and elsewhere to an unspecified 1915 magazine.” According to Snopes, the fact-checking web site, the 1872 list has been “displayed in numerous museums throughout North America,” over the past 50 years, “with each exhibitor claiming that it originated with their county or school district.” Heck, the lists even appeared in the venerated Washington Post not so long ago. - https://www.openculture.com/2013/09/rules-for-teachers-in-1872-1915-no-drinking-smoking-or-trips-to-barber-shops-and-ice-cream-parlors.html

1932 book, "The Sociology of Teaching." The book credits the contract not to the 1930s, but to a 1927 article in The Nation magazine about teachers' working conditions. The contract was from "a small village on the North Carolina seacoast."

Rules for Teachers in 1872 & 1915: No Drinking, Smoking, or Trips to Barber Shops and Ice Cream Parlors

1. Teachers will fill the lamps and clean the chimney each day.
2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s sessions.
3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual tastes of the pupils.
4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in improper conduct will be dismissed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each day’s pay a goodly sum of his earnings. He should use his savings during his retirement years so that he will not become a burden on society.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, visits pool halls or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop, will give good reasons for people to suspect his worth, intentions, and honesty.
9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay.

Side Quest: The Rules for Teachers — Fact, Fiction, and the Fine Line Between

When archivist Pamela Gibson from Timaru Girls’ High School shared an old clipping titled “Rules for Teachers, 1872,” I felt disbelief. Surely this had to be one of those quaint “old-time teacher rules” that circle the internet — the ones so strict they almost feel like satire. But when I began digging, I realised that while the viral posters are partly myth, the spirit of them is heartbreakingly true.

Across New Zealand in the early 1900s, teachers — especially women — were held to impossibly high moral standards. Employment handbooks and school board circulars weren’t just about lesson plans or pay scales; they spelled out how teachers were expected to live. Rules from regional boards like Canterbury and Otago instructed women to be “models of morality and decorum,” to attend church regularly, and to “avoid extravagance in dress.” Teachers were warned not to smoke, to steer clear of hotels and dance halls, and to maintain the “respect of the community.” In some districts, those expectations extended right into their homes: they were told not to entertain men, to keep a tidy house, and to live in a way befitting their “station.”

And then there was the rule that still makes me wince — the marriage bar. Under Section 39 of the Finance Act 1931 (No 4), schools were given legal authority to dismiss any woman teacher who married, unless the Minister granted a special exemption. It wasn’t just a social custom; it was law. The thinking of the time was shaped by the Great Depression — when jobs were scarce, and governments believed each household should have only one breadwinner. Married women were seen as “supplementary earners,” and dismissing them was thought to make room for someone else’s husband to work. It wasn’t born of cruelty so much as economic panic — but the result was the same. Countless women were forced to choose between their profession and their family life.

The viral “Rules for Teachers” posters that circulate today — the ones listing requirements like no bright colours, home by 8 p.m., no ice-cream parlours, and sweep the floors daily — come from a 1915 American schoolboard circular in Ottawa, Kansas. They were later reproduced in teacher training colleges across the English-speaking world, including New Zealand, as examples of early-century morality in education. Over time, the lines blurred: genuine clauses from our own Education Department and regional boards mixed with these imported rules to create a composite picture that feels almost folkloric. Yet behind the myth lies truth — the fire that teachers really did have to light before dawn, the ankle-length skirt, and the knowledge that marriage could end their career overnight.

It’s no wonder, then, that so many of the remarkable women whose stories I’ve uncovered remained unmarried. Their independence wasn’t always a choice born of freedom — sometimes, it was the only way to keep their place in the classroom.

Side Quest: Were there special rules for women to be able to buy icecream? 

Of all the “rules for teachers” I’ve read, one still makes me smile — and cringe — in equal measure:

“Teachers may not loiter downtown in ice-cream parlours.”

It sounds charmingly ridiculous today, but it wasn’t a joke. In the early 1900s, ice-cream parlours were considered morally risky places. They were new, bright, and social — one of the few public spaces where men and women could mingle freely without chaperones. In many small towns, they stayed open late, sat near hotels and theatres, and served sweets instead of spirits. To the conservative eye of the time, that mix of sugar, music, and mixed company was a recipe for impropriety.

For female teachers, reputation was everything. They weren’t just employees of the school — they were living examples of virtue. Their private behaviour was seen as a reflection of their public worth. Education board circulars in New Zealand didn’t always spell out “ice-cream parlours,” but they did warn teachers to “avoid any conduct or place that might lessen the respect of the community.” That included hotels, dance halls, and anywhere a teacher might be seen as too modern, too sociable, or too visible. The 1915 Kansas school board circular that banned loitering in parlours wasn’t far from the truth of New Zealand life either; similar codes of respectability were printed in our own Education Gazette and teacher handbooks.

I try to imagine it — a young teacher in Timaru or Waimate in 1912, working long days, boarding with strangers, and earning just enough to buy a new hat once a year. One evening she meets a friend for ice cream after choir practice. Two pupils’ parents walk past the window. By Monday morning, whispers travel, and the headmaster reminds her of the “standards expected of a teacher.” One innocent evening becomes a warning about reputation — and in that moment, you see just how fragile a woman’s independence could be.

The ice-cream parlour rule might make us laugh now, but it speaks volumes about how women’s freedom was policed in everyday ways. Respectability was the currency that kept your job — and the price was constant vigilance. Even a simple scoop of vanilla could melt a career.

1915 Shows Stafford Street, Timaru. Some of the buildings on the left going down are, Refreshment rooms, Ice cream parlour, Nisbet Ltd and Edwards pictures. On the corner of the right side is a tailor shop with a policeman standing on the footpath outside. A few horse drawn carts, two motor cars and some pedestrians and cyclists can be seen. In the early 1900's, ice cream was also sold, along with milkshakes, sodas, fruit drinks, fruit salads, coffee and confectionery, in American-styled ice cream parlours and "marble bars"  Ref: 1/2-107025-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Statute of Westminster Adoption Act https://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE34790328

Side Quest: When Global Shifts Shaped Local Lives — The Statute of Westminster and Women’s Worlds

Sometimes, history’s big constitutional moments — the ones written in London — seem far removed from the daily lives of women in small New Zealand towns. But look closer, and you see how global decisions ripple into the most personal spaces: classrooms, pay packets, and family choices.

On 11 December 1931, the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster, granting full legislative independence to its six Dominions — Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State, and Newfoundland. It was a monumental step: for the first time, these self-governing nations could make their own laws without British interference. Yet New Zealand hesitated. At that time, most New Zealanders still thought of themselves as proudly British, bound by race, language, culture, and empire. Prime Minister Gordon Coates even called the document a “poisonous” idea, fearing it might erode the Empire’s unity.

While the Statute represented political independence, the New Zealand Parliament was passing a very different kind of law at home that same year — the Finance Act 1931 (No 4). Hidden deep in its Education section was Section 39: Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers. It’s startling to think that in the same year New Zealand declined to claim full sovereignty from Britain, it also made a rule restricting women’s freedom to work after marriage. The nation wanted independence from Westminster — but not yet equality for women. Ouch.

I think this juxtaposition tells us something key about the era. The early 1930s were shaped by the Great Depression, collapsing trade, and fear of social instability. Across the world, governments were trying to preserve order — some by centralising power, others by shoring up “traditional” values. In New Zealand, that meant protecting the ideal of the one-income household: men as breadwinners, women as homemakers. International law may have been proclaiming freedom and autonomy at the national level, but at the same time, laws like the marriage bar were tightening control at the personal level.

So this in many ways is a reminder that freedom is not a single event. A country can gain independence while half its citizens are still restricted. New Zealand’s delay in adopting the Statute of Westminster until 1947 shows how slowly the nation adjusted to independence. Likewise, the repeal of the marriage bar — finally erased in 1965 under Minister Arthur Kinsella — reveals how slowly equality caught up. Both journeys trace the same arc: the long, uneven process of learning what freedom really means.

Side Quest: Did England Have a Marriage Bar?

If New Zealand’s law forcing married women teachers out of work sounds shocking, it’s worth asking — where did that idea even come from? The uncomfortable answer is... I think from my reading that we inherited it. The marriage bar wasn’t uniquely Kiwi. It was a British export, I suspect you will agree... one of the less celebrated hand-me-downs of Empire.

In Britain, the marriage bar appeared in the late 1800s and became entrenched by the early 20th century. It wasn’t a single Act of Parliament but a network of policies and civil service rules that effectively said: if a woman married, she must resign. It applied first to teachers, then to civil servants, bank clerks, and railway office staff. The reasoning sounded practical: jobs were scarce, and married women, it was assumed, had husbands to provide for them. Why should one household have two incomes while others had none? It was called “the family wage” — a tidy moral idea that hid an untidy truth about inequality.

By 1921, Britain’s Civil Service formally barred married women from permanent posts, and most education authorities enforced similar rules. Teachers who married had to give up their positions. The policy spread through other English-speaking countries, including New Zealand, where the same logic took hold: one job per household. The ideology behind it — the male breadwinner model — was treated as common sense, not discrimination. In the midst of the Great Depression, it became government policy.

Britain, however, began to rethink things earlier than we did. The Second World War changed everything. With men overseas, women filled factories, offices, and classrooms — proving, as so often in history, that they were essential. By the mid-1940s, the hypocrisy of dismissing capable married women was impossible to ignore. The teaching marriage bar was lifted in 1944, and the civil service bar followed in 1946. When New Zealand finally repealed ours in 1965, we were nearly two decades behind.

It’s sobering to realise that the same country that gave us suffrage ideals and parliamentary democracy also gave us policies that quietly erased women’s independence. But it’s also a reminder that progress is uneven — liberty on one hand, limitation on the other. Britain exported both. And New Zealand, like many former dominions, had to learn to keep the good ideas and outgrow the bad ones.

(Sources: UK National Archives – “Women and the Civil Service Marriage Bar”, BBC History, UK Parliament Education Service; see also Megan Cook, Marriage and Partnering – Marriage, 1900 to the 1960s, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.)

What the Marriage Bar Teaches Us Today

When you stand back and look at the timeline below (if you have managed to make it that far, because let's face it, this is a loooong blog!) the laws, the debates, the newspaper headlines remind us how easy it could be to think of it all as ancient history. But the reality is, it isn’t really that long ago. The last marriage bar in New Zealand was repealed in 1965. That means some of our mothers or grandmothers lived through it. Some may have left their jobs, not because they wanted to, but because the law told them to.

To me, that’s both sad and grounding. It reminds me how quickly rights can be taken for granted.

For women today, the story of the marriage bar isn’t just about looking back... it can be used as a mirror. One that asks us to see what invisible rules still shape our choices?
Because while no one tells us to resign when we marry, many women still face the balancing acts — between career, caregiving, and the expectations of being “enough” in every role.

We’ve inherited the freedom that women like Mary McLean and countless others never had. Yet we also live with a version of the same tension — how to build a meaningful life without losing ourselves in the process.

I sometimes think about how, in the 1930s, people genuinely believed they were doing the right thing — ensuring each household had an income, protecting social order in a time of fear. Maybe it wasn’t meant as cruelty. But it became a system that quietly erased women’s potential.

Today, our challenge isn’t to fight the same battles, but to stay awake to how power and policy still shape opportunity — for women, for mothers, for anyone balancing care and contribution. Equality is never “done.” It’s a living thing we have to keep tending.

And I can’t help but feel grateful — for the women who stayed, for the women who left, and for those who spoke up when it was risky to do so. Because their courage gave us choices.

It’s also why, as a working mother myself, I try to make room for both ambition and nurture — to know that the freedom I have today came from those who couldn’t have both.

So maybe that’s what the marriage bar says to us now: don’t forget what it took to get here — and don’t stop until every woman has the same freedom to choose.

Finance Act 1931 (No 4) — official reprint on New Zealand Legislation

(Part 3: Education amendment, Section 39 “Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers.” Repealed by Education Act 1964, s204(1); Act repealed by Statutes Repeal Act 2017, s3(1).)

Megan Cook, “Marriage and partnering – Marriage, 1900 to the 1960s,” Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
https://teara.govt.nz/en/marriage-and-partnering/page-3
(Story by Megan Cook, published 21 April 2011, updated 1 May 2017; accessed 1 November 2025.)

Jo Aitken, “Wives and Mothers First: The New Zealand Teachers’ Marriage Bar and the Ideology of Domesticity, 1920–1940,” Women’s Studies Journal (NZ), Vol. 25, No. 2, 2011, pp. 5–14.
Open access via ProQuest:
https://www.proquest.com/openview/d7aba2667014e250c9b67b3fb6fa28d8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1816886

Irene Mosca & Robert E. Wright, “Economics of Marriage Bars,” in Springer Research Encyclopedia of Women and Economic Thought (2018)
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_308-1

Angela Burgess, The Erosion of Marriage: The Effect of Law on New Zealand’s Foundational Institution. Auckland: Maxim Institute, 2002, p. 26.

Gabrielle Ann Fortune, “‘Mr Jones’ Wives: World War II War Brides of New Zealand Servicemen,” PhD thesis, University of Auckland, 2005, p. 27.

Primary newspaper sources (via Papers Past)

• Hawera Star, “Married Women Teachers — Dismissal Power Not Given,” 4 August 1931, p. 9.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HAWST19310804.2.100

• Wanganui Chronicle, “Dismissal of Teachers — Power for Education Boards,” 28 October 1931, p. 8.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19311028.2.101

A Marriage Bar is the requirement that women working in certain jobs must leave that job when they marry. In the late 1800s to early 1900s, legislative provisions that required women to resign at marriage were introduced in several countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK. Spillovers to jobs not strictly covered by the Marriage Bar were also common. This chapter critically reviews, from an economics perspective, the background, the history, and the impacts of Marriage Bars. This chapter has four aims. The first is to summarize the arguments provided by government officials and employers to justify both the introduction and the retention of Marriage Bars. The second is to provide a cross-country comparison of Marriage Bars. The third is to investigate the potential impacts of the Marriage Bar on women’s behavior with respect to employment, marriage, and education. The fourth is to highlight potential avenues for future research. Although Marriage Bars do not exist anymore, they are still a serious topic of current debate. Much more can be learned about important topics, such as discrimination, from carrying out research focused on Marriage Bars. https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_308-1

The Economics of Discrimination https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=50qHcSNVVEMC&lpg=PP7&ots=ETkUKdiuwl&lr&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false

Education Act 1964 (confirms the repeal of the earlier marriage-bar power as part of the Act). legislation.govt.nz

Minister of Education at the time: Arthur Kinsella (confirms who stewarded the 1964 reforms). Wikipedia+1

Advocacy context: NZWTA and NCW pages (show sustained campaigns around women teachers’ status and opposition to bars). nzhistory.govt.nz+1

Social context: Te Ara’s overview of marriage and mid-century norms (explains why attitudes were changing). teara.govt.nz

Rules for Teachers, 1915 (Ottawa, Kansas, USA), reproduced in the U.S. National Archives Teacher Resources and numerous museum exhibits. The original list includes the clause: “Teachers may not loiter downtown in ice-cream parlours.” Full text available at:

• Finance Act 1931 (No 4) — official New Zealand reprint, which included Section 39: “Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers.”

• Education Act 1964 (No 135) — repealed the above section, ending the legal authority for the “marriage bar.”
  https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1964/0135/latest/DLM358614.html

• Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand: Megan Cook, “Marriage and partnering – Marriage, 1900 to the 1960s,” published 21 April 2011, updated 1 May 2017.
  https://teara.govt.nz/en/marriage-and-partnering/page-3

• Wives and Mothers First: The New Zealand Teachers’ Marriage Bar and the Ideology of Domesticity, 1920–1940 (University of Auckland, ProQuest).
  https://www.proquest.com/openview/d7aba2667014e250c9b67b3fb6fa28d8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1816886

• Hawera Star, “Married Women Teachers,” Volume LI, 4 August 1931, Page 9.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HAWST19310804.2.100

• Wanganui Chronicle, “Dismissal of Teachers,” Volume 74, Issue 255, 28 October 1931, Page 8.
  https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19311028.2.101

• For comparison of teacher moral codes:
  “Teacher Conduct Rules, 1905–1930,” New Zealand Education Gazette archives, National Library of New Zealand (search term: teacher conduct circulars).

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_bar

"To mark the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in 2018, we prepared an online version of Women together: a history of women’s organisations in New Zealand / Ngā rōpū wāhine o te motu. This important reference work was published in 1993 to mark the centenary of women’s suffrage. For the online edition we've worked with the original editor, Anne Else, to update both the entries on individual organisations and the thematic overview essays. Entries on 23 significant new organisations formed since 1993 have also been added. Read an introduction to the history of women's organisations in New Zealand. Follow the links below to find histories of organisations and theme-based overviews. The themes included are: Māori; Political; Welfare; Religion;  Employment; Health; Service; Education (early childhood and girls and women); Rural; Sport; Arts (arts and crafts and performing arts); Immigration; and Lesbian. The table can be sorted by organisation name, theme, and start and end dates." - https://nzhistory.govt.nz/women-together

William Downie Stewart Jr (1878–1949)

Minister of Finance when the Marriage Bar was introduced (1931)

• Wikimedia Commons: (Public domain; official portrait used widely in historical publications)

• Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: (Includes portrait and biographical summary.)

• DigitalNZ: https://digitalnz.org/records/23204849 (Photograph of William Downie Stewart in a wheelchair, c. 1932, Alexander Turnbull Library.)

Arthur Ellis Kinsella (1918–2004)

Minister of Education when the Marriage Bar was repealed (1964)

• Wikimedia Commons: (Public domain, 1961 parliamentary portrait.)

• National Library of New Zealand catalogue: https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22377890 (Entry under “Kinsella, Arthur Ellis, 1918–2004”.)

• Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand – Arthur Ellis Kinsella:

Timeline: The Marriage Bar — From Empire to Equality

Late 1800s – Early 1900s: Victorian Roots

• Context: Industrialisation reshapes the workforce. Women increasingly take up roles as teachers, typists, and clerks.

• Belief system: The “male breadwinner model” dominates. Married women are expected to stay home; single women may work temporarily until marriage.

• Impact: Many local education boards and employers in Britain informally require women to resign when they marry.

• Key social idea: One income per household ensures fairness and social stability — or so it was thought.

1910s – 1920s: Britain Formalises the Rule

• 1914–1918 – World War I: Women fill jobs left by men, proving capable across all sectors. After the war, however, they’re pressured back into domestic life.

• 1921: The British Civil Service introduces an official marriage bar, prohibiting married women from permanent posts.

• 1920s: Most local education authorities enforce similar rules. A married woman teacher must resign.

• 1920: The UK Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act paradoxically opens professions to women — but allows exceptions “in the interests of the state,” which employers use to justify the marriage bar.

• 1929: The onset of the Great Depression intensifies the belief that married women “take jobs” from men.

1931 – The Year of Two Freedoms (and Two Restrictions)

• 11 December 1931 – The Statute of Westminster (UK): The British Parliament passes this act, granting full legislative independence to its dominions, including New Zealand.

• 1931 – New Zealand’s Finance Act (No. 4): Introduces Section 39, allowing education boards to dismiss married women teachers “in the interests of economy.”

  • This becomes New Zealand’s legal marriage bar.

  • Effectively mirrors British and Australian employment policies.

• Prime Minister Gordon Coates calls the Statute of Westminster a “poisonous document” — symbolising a country reluctant to claim national independence, even as it limits personal freedoms.

1930s: The Depression Era Tightens Gender Roles

• Economic collapse leads governments worldwide to adopt austerity.

• Marriage bars expand across teaching, civil service, and clerical work — in Britain, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.

• Rationale: Preserve jobs for “breadwinning men.”

• Result: Thousands of talented women leave their careers upon marriage, losing income, pensions, and seniority.

1939–1945: World War II and the Seeds of Change

• Married women are urgently recruited back to work in both Britain and New Zealand.

• Women prove vital to war industries, administration, and teaching.

• Public opinion begins to shift: the nation needs both men and women to recover.

1944–1946: Britain Leads Reform

• 1944: The teaching marriage bar is lifted in England under post-war education reforms.

• 1946: The Civil Service marriage bar is abolished, acknowledging women’s essential contribution.

• The British example sets the stage for gradual policy changes across the Commonwealth.

1947 – New Zealand Finally Claims Legislative Independence

• Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1947: New Zealand finally adopts the 1931 Statute, formally ending the British Parliament’s power to legislate for New Zealand.

• Ironically, women still lack workplace independence: the marriage bar remains firmly in place.

1950s – Social Tensions and Slow Progress

• The post-war baby boom revives traditional gender roles.

• Married women teachers and nurses continue to resign under legal or social pressure.

• However, women’s organisations, unions, and educators begin to challenge the injustice.

• Notable figures like Mary McLean, decades earlier, had already shown how women could lead entire institutions — yet by law, her successors could not marry and keep their posts.

1960s – The Turning Point

• 1961–1964: Social and political movements for women’s equality gather strength worldwide.

• 1965: Under Minister of Education Arthur Kinsella, New Zealand repeals the marriage bar.

  • Kinsella’s reform modernises education policy and recognises that marriage should not determine employability.

• By 1966: Married women are again legally able to teach and hold government positions.

1970s – Broader Equal Rights Movement

• The global women’s liberation movement challenges systemic discrimination in work, law, and politics.

• 1972: New Zealand passes the Equal Pay Act, establishing pay equality for men and women doing the same work.

• The Human Rights Commission Act (1977) further outlaws discrimination based on marital status.

Reflection: What the Timeline Shows

From imperial export to national reform, the marriage bar’s story mirrors New Zealand’s broader journey — from dependency to independence, both politically and socially.
The same empire that gave us parliamentary democracy also passed down the structures that sidelined women.
And while those early laws might have seemed practical at the time — ensuring every household had an income — they also erased individual choice and ambition.

Looking back, it’s a reminder that freedom comes in layers.
A country can be independent on paper long before its people are equal in practice.