‘Well they Weren’t Married!’: The Marriage Bar at Radio/Telefís Éireann 1962–72

Abstract

This article examines the use of the marriage bar at the Irish national broadcaster Radio/Telefís Éireann from 1962, when the station went to air, until 1972, when the station lifted the bar. The marriage bar was a regulation that required women to give up their jobs upon marriage. It applied, on a statutory basis, to all female civil servants, and as a cultural practice for most lines of white collar employment in Ireland. This article takes the Irish national broadcaster as a case study to examine the implication of the bar in the media sector in Ireland. It looks at multiple classes of women at the national broadcaster and examines the varied implementation of the bar and its impact on female workers. To that end, it looks first at women at the higher levels of the station who worked as department heads and producers. It then moves on to discuss the marriage bar’s impact on women who worked on screen at Radio/Telefís Éireann. Finally, it looks at women in the lower ranks of programme making roles who worked as Production Assistants and Research Assistants. It argues that the Irish national broadcaster utilised the marriage bar similarly to other public sector bodies in that it was used to reinforce a male breadwinner ideal within the organisation. This article will discuss multiple classes of women workers at the station drawing out some of the differences and similarities in the bar’s implementation across classes. It will first discuss the ways in which the marriage bar was applied to producers and directors, the highest-ranked female workers at the station. It will then move on to the treatment of married women who worked on screen before addressing women who worked as production assistants and research assistants. Significantly, those who worked as PAs and RAs represented some of the lowest ranking women at the national broadcaster. Finally, the article will discuss the end of the marriage bar at the station.