Re: "all-girl" radio

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

>Don wrote--
>Anyway...she was a teacher there in the early 40's, then she got married.
>And had to quit.  Department Policy.  If you're a woman and you got married,
>you must be planning to get pregnant.  Therefore we must replace you.  It was
>a Boston School Department policy.  Really.   Sometime in the 60's they
>relented and changed the policy, so my mother went back to the Burke and
>attempted to teach Valerie Holliday ans Donna Summer.

Edison Electric was another company that had a policy that once a woman got 
married, she had to hand in her resignation.  I have the WEEI employee 
manual for 1938, and that is what it said verbatim.  Also, a Variety 
article about women taking over for men at various radio stations (I can 
find the article-- I am going to quote from it for the book I'm writing...) 
during WW2 stated that "all the women understand that they are only working 
for these stations until the men return home, at which time the women will 
be expected to resign."  It was part of an agreement the women who were 
hired had to sign...

And for those who think it changed long ago, in 1980 (!) I was working 
somewhere that will remain nameless and found that I was being paid 
substantially less than my male assistant.  Needless to say, I was not 
amused, so I went to talk to the GM and expressed my surprise, whereupon he 
said to me, "But Donna, you're making excellent money for a woman. "  The 
sad part is, he was serious, because he then reminded me that my assistant 
had a family to support.  I reminded him that I didn't get a discount on my 
rent for being female nor did I get a discount on any of my bills, so why 
should I get a discount on my salary-- but he still failed to see the 
point...