'Jobs for Girls Revisited': The Rise of Automation and Clerical Labor in the British Financial Services Industry, 1900-1950

This paper explores the historical development of the rise of women workers in the British financial services industry from 1900 to 1950.  Until 1914 the majority of clerical work absorbing women was the state (Wardley, 2006).  In particular the majority of women workers employed by the state were within the General Post Office, from the late 1860s and the subsidiary Post Office Savings Bank, from 1870 onwards. 

By the beginning of the 20^th century, the British banking system was mainly locally based and moderately sized. This generated an expansion of employment opportunities for women.  These processes included the introduction of automated systems.  The development of these processes affected other allied financial services from the beginning of the 20^th century, and had implications for future developments of the British financial services industry.  Yet in the Post Office, the largest employer of women and major provider of financial services, female opportunity remained restricted. Nevertheless, women worked alongside men, both in the pre-war, wartime and interwar periods.  Inequalities were perpetuated by the restrictions of an arbitrarily-defined, management-delineated interpretation of ‘value’ based on skills – a move that was ultimately influenced by the necessity to maintain inequality as defined by the government’s employment policy in the public service.  

This paper explores whether the labour market for clerical workers in the British banking industry was being feminised through the process of automation.  In so doing, it will seek to correlate the impact of automation on the (re)gendering of the workforce in the British banking sector.