ABSTRACT
In February 1982 a personnel manager in one of Australia’s most conservative banks organised a ‘women at work’ get-together of eight ‘career’ women, to which we were invited. It’s a hanking image problem-the males think, well there’s not going to be enough careers, so why bother, there’s no incentive … if people still think of a male as a breadwinner. The finance sector expanded rapidly in the postwar boom years. Women moved into the banks during World War II when they became ledgerkeepers and relief tellers. Up to the mid 1960s the movement of women into the banks was directly related to mechanisation. Industrial legislation in the field of equal pay was only one of the factors, and not the most important, which determined bank policy on female employment. The career structure was opened up to women at the very same time that it began to be dismantled. Militant industrial consciousness is very seldom generated spontaneously.
