‘Those who formed the Open Door Council have for some time been viewing with increasing alarm the present tendency to legislate with the ostensible object of improving the lot of the woman worker.’ [1]
So began the first report of the Open Door Council (ODC) in 1927.
On the surface, legislation to improve the lot of the woman worker sounds like a positive move. Why was this a matter of concern to feminists? The answer to this question lies in the phrase ‘ostensible object’. For many interwar feminists these measures were not designed to protect women but instead to restrict their opportunities, forcing them into lower-paid professions.
The ODC was founded by British feminists in 1926 to eradicate such sex discrimination in industry. An international branch, the Open Door International (ODI) was established in 1929. The ODC argued that regulations such as placing limitations on the hours women could work, or banning women from working with certain substances, were not truly protective. How to remedy this situation was the ‘one burning question’ [2] facing the ODC from its formation. In their own words:
‘If women’s freedom to work is hemmed about by restrictions and limitations (however pious their object) which do not at the same time apply to men, they will have even less chance than they have at present of securing well-paid employment’.[3]
For example, in the second half of the 1920s, the British government proposed new bills for the protection of women in industrial professions. The Lead Paint (Protection Against Poisoning) Bill sought to ban women and children from working with lead paint. This policy was echoed in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of the League of Nations, which had in 1921 adopted a convention that effectively did the same. The ILO convention was ratified in 18 countries across Europe and South America. [4] This was justified on the grounds that women were more susceptible to lead poisoning than men. As a result, women across the world were excluded from professions such as house decorating.
Opponents to this policy, and other similar restrictive legislation, rejected the notion that women should be grouped together with children. As the ODC pointed out in their first report, since 1918 women had had the vote, and could thus legislate for themselves. ‘Women, so long as they were unenfranchised and unorganised, required to be legislated for. And the citizen endeavouring to do his best for them automatically classed them with his other dependants- children’. [5] Since women were enfranchised, men no longer needed to ‘protect’ them; the persistence of such a view denied women their rights to economic independence. The ODC were not the only contemporaries that resented the constant coupling of children and women as one vulnerable group. In a debate about the Lead Paint Bill, Sir Robert Newman, MP for Exeter in 1926, stated:
I am convinced that the average woman is getting more and more inclined to resent, now that they have the vote for Parliament and are exercising other privileges, the tendency that I see growing very strongly indeed to tell them, even though they are over 40 years of age, that they are not old enough to look after themselves. They are being constantly grouped with children. Before they had the vote they were grouped with lunatics. Now it is always women and children. [6]
Voices within the House of Commons, however, continued to insist that women needed protection. In the same debate, Mr Haden Guest, MP for Southwark North, was in favour of directly banning women from using lead paint, on the grounds ‘women can less effectively protect themselves.’ [7]
Much restrictive legislation was justified on the grounds that women’s bodies were more vulnerable. In the case of lead paint, the belief that women were more susceptible to get plumbism (lead poisoning) was commonly cited by advocates of the Bill. Furthermore, the Bill was justified owing to the belief that the negative effects of plumbism could be passed from mother to foetus, and could act as an abortifacient.
The ODC and its supporters sought to combat the persistency of these claims, which, as they argued, were based on non-scientific evidence. In a supplement to a 1929 edition of The Open Door, the international mouthpiece of the ODI, honorary secretary Winifred Le Sueur countered the validity of these claims. Le Sueur pointed out that higher rates of lead poisoning in females was only observed where working conditions between men and women were markedly different. As a result, women were more susceptible owing to anaemia and malnutrition, both of which can be attributed to poor working conditions and low pay. Le Sueur cites a further study where working conditions between men and women were the same, men were actually more susceptible than women. Secondly, Le Sueur dismissed the suggestion that lead poisoning is a racial poison only when afflicting women. Whilst she acknowledged that lead poisoning can result in abortion, miscarriage and still-birth, she pointed out that men too can pass on the damaging effects of lead positioning onto offspring. [8]
Despite the well-known damaging effects of lead poisoning on women and men in the 1920s, the lead content in paint reportedly peaked between 1930 and 1955. [9] It was banned from sale to the general public in Britain in 1992 under European Union legislation.
Throughout their lifespans, the ODC and the ODI campaigned over a number of women’s economic issues, including other restrictive legislation regarding night work and mining. The ODC was also closely involved in the campaign for Equal Compensation during the Second World War. By the 1950s, support for both groups was dwindling. The ODC wrapped up in 1965, and the ODI officially ended in 1974. All sex discrimination in the workplace was outlawed in 1975 with the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act, which was replaced by the Equality Act in 2010.
By Katie Carpenter
Katie Carpenter is a Citizens project intern researching the collections of the Women’s Library at the LSE Library. Katie is also a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London.
[1] Open Door Council, First Annual Report 1926-1927 (1927), Cover page, WL, LSE Library, 6B/106/5/ODC/A1
[2] Ibid., 6.
[3] Ibid., 3.
[4] Winifred Le Sueur, ‘The Use of Lead Paint by Women’, Supplement to The Open Door, December 1929, WL, LSE Library, 5/ODI/F1.
[5] Open Door Council, First Annual Report 1926-1927, 4.
[6] Sir Robert Newman, CLAUSE 2.- (Prohibition of employment of women and young persons in painting buildings with lead paint.), HC Deb, 3 August 1926, hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1926/aug/03/clause-2-prohibition-of-employment-of#S5CV0198P0_19260803_HOC_474
[7] Mr Haden Guest, ibid.
[8] Le Sueur, ‘Lead Paint’.
[9] Jeff Howell, ‘Prperty: Call time on heavy metal poisoning’ [sic], The Independent, 15 February 1998, www.independent.co.uk/news/business/prperty-call-time-on-heavy-metal-poisoning-1144886.html
