ABSTRACT
In its initial concern with women's employment at high levels this enquiry has had a double focus. It began by studying the discrepancy between women's obvious contribution to the lower and middle ranks of many highly qualified professions and the much smaller number of women in higher posts. Women outnumber men by three to one among assistant teachers in the basic grade, but are outnumbered by men among the heads even of primary schools; by as much as six to one among the heads of comprehensive schools. Among hospital doctors in England and Wales women provide 25 per cent of house officers but only 7 per cent of consultants. In the Administrative Civil Service women provide 17 per cent of Assistant Principals but only 3 per cent of Under-Secretaries. At the moment there is no woman Permanent Secretary at all. Why do discrepancies like these exist, and what might be done about them? From this point of view the focus of the enquiry has been on top jobs in a relatively narrow sense. The research team's preliminary broadsheet on Women and Top Jobsl illustrated the dividing line between 'top' and lower jobs in this sense by examples such as:
Industry
Civil Service
Hospital Board
Posts above and below the 'top' job line
Head of a major division Senior manager in a simior function, company em-lar company, responsible ploying 2,000-5,000 to the head of the major
division or function
Under-Secretary (Assist-. ant Secretary marginal)
Consultant
Principal
Medical Assistant, Senior Registrar
But as the enquiry has proceeded it has developed a second and stronger focus on the constraints which seem still to be holding down women's share in higher professional and managerial work generally, not only in posts at the very top. Women's entry into a number of higher professions in Britain has followed a sequence from breakthrough to acceptance onto a plateau suggesting stagnation. In architecture, for example, the doors of the profession were opened by the 1920s, and by the 1950s a number of those who first came through them had established themselves as accepted senior practitioners. The number who reached the very top .and were accepted as leaders of the profession was small, but, in proportion to the number of women practising, may if anything have been higher than among men. But the total number of women architects remained small, only around 4 per cent of all the architects practising, and showed no sign of rapid increase. Women architects had become an accepted but apparently permanent minority. In the Administrative Civil Service, the universities, and the higher ranks of the B.B.C. the story has been similar. Women doctors moved through the same stages a generation earlier, reaching by the 1920s and 1930s the standing which women architects reached by the 1950s. In politics the pattern has been similar though the timing has been different. The first woman M.P., Constance Markievicz, was elected in 1918, though as a Sinn Feiner and from 1919 a Minister in Dail Eireann she did not take her Westminster seat. The first woman actually to take a Westminster seat was elected at the end of 1919. By the 1930s women were well established in the House and there had been a woman Cabinet Minister. By the 1960s, if not by the 1950s, a noticeable proportion of women Members were of the standing which would let them reach for the top places in politics. But the total number of women M.P.s has remained small.
