Women in Banking: Continuity and Change Since the Second World War

Employment relations in the major clearing banks have been the subject of sociological attention since the 1950s, when they presented the apparent epitome of the bureaucratic career. However, the banks have increasingly become major employers of female labour. Women in banks have not historically had the same career opportunities as men, for a variety of reasons ranging from deliberate male exclusion practices to the broken and often short-term nature of many women's work histories. This contrast between the experiences of men and women in the same occupation is used to question the `conventional view' of occupational class analysis, where the (male) occupational structure is treated as if it were the `class structure'. The argument is developed using a number of sources, including the occupational history of a female bank employee with over thirty years work experience, as well as the findings of recent equal opportunities investigations.