Winifred Anderson and the Married Women’s (Lecturers and Teachers) Act 1932
Winifred May Anderson (nee McEwan)
Winifred May McEwan was a good teacher. She studied, she worked, she received consistently excellent reports from the school inspectors. But in 1936 she made a choice that had her dismissed by the NSW Department of Education.
She got married.
Teacher training
Winifred was born in Nundle New South Wales in 1894 to James and Eliza McEwan. When she was just 16 she won a scholarship to start her career as a teacher, admitted to a two year course at high school to be prepared for teacher training college.
After two years at Sydney Teachers College Winifred graduated as a teacher at the end of 1914.
Winfred Anderson, then McEwen, bottom 2nd from left, Sydney Teachers College 1913 or 1914. Photograph of Sydney Teachers College Students (2025-39)
Teaching employment
Every person in her college photograph could expect to be assigned by the NSW Department of Education to a school as an assistant teacher, perhaps firstly to a small rural school and then as they gained experience and undertook certification examinations, to be promoted to often larger schools.
But the government held a couple of crucial differences in expectation to these equally trained new teachers. The males in the back row would immediately be paid roughly 30% more than the women in the front row. This pay gap would increase as the male teachers continued along the path to becoming a headmaster, a rarity for female teachers, the best they could achieve being an infants’ mistress.
Winifred McEwen’s postings
Accepting postings around the state and moving often was common at the time.
For Miss Winifred McEwan her first posting took her to the infants department of Woollahra Public School in 1915. She moved to St Ethel’s Public School in South Maitland in 1917, where she is listed in the Public Service Gazette as an ex-student.
Later that year she moved to Lakemba Public School then in January 1920 she was transferred to Redfern Public School where she spent 3 months before a promotion took her to Leeton Public School for a year.
In the following 15 years Winifred taught at Woronora, Waterloo, Artarmon, Kurri Kurri, West Maitland, Erskineville and Campsie. In January 1929 Winifred returned to Kurri Kurri Public School as a Class 1 Infants’ Mistress then in 1930 to Glebe Public School as a Class 2 Infants’ Mistress.
Extract of timetable for Class 2A prepared by Winifred Anderson (nee McEwen), circa 1930. Class timetable card (2025-55)
Expectations of married women teachers
From Winifred’s earliest postings, the period when she was establishing her career, NSW women teachers were discouraged from continuing in the teaching service after marriage. They were told they couldn’t be guaranteed postings in locations with their husbands and that resignation after marriage was preferred.
This governmental attitude became more pronounced during economic downturns in the 1890s, and again, much more forcefully, during the Depression. Going back to the way things had been forty years before would not be easy. As with other employed women of the time, women teachers were now resisting these official encouragements, delaying marriage, and those who married, delayed childbearing. They chose not to resign.
Consequently Premier Jack Lang’s Labor government first started talking about a bill to dismiss married women teachers in 1930. They did not justify this as an economic necessity but stressed instead that these women were taking the teaching positions that should go to newly graduated male teachers.
In the pamphlet Should Women Teachers be Dismissed When They Marry? (quoted in Bruce Mitchell, 1975) the United Associations of Women (UAW) claimed the Act deprived women of ‘one of the fundamental rights of human beings, that being the ‘right to marry’. Supporters of dismissal believed that marriage and child rearing was ‘the lot of women’ and career was a choice.
Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act 1932
Attempts to oppose the Bill were fragmented by successfully pitting women against men, married women against single women, conservatives against political radicals, in competition for jobs and respect, and so the Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act 1932 was passed and 220 married female teachers were dismissed – ‘retired’ if of retirement age, ‘retrenched’ if having served over 10 years, or ‘discharged’, if under 10 years of service. Under the Act no further employment of married female teachers was to be made.
There were exceptions to this general dismissal of female staff. Headmaster’s wives working as needlework teachers were specifically excluded at Section 6.
“Nothing in this Act shall affect the wives of classified teachers in charge of fifth or sixth class schools so so far as the giving instruction by them in needlework or domestic arts (inclusive of needlework) is concerned.” Section 6, Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act 1932
Married women could be re-employed under Section 44 of the Public Service Act 1902 as temporary teachers under yearly certificates with considerable loss of salary, status and entitlement, on submission of an annual claim.
Other than the exemptions for divorced women, widows, needlework teachers, married women still under bond to the Department, and a handful of women with specialist qualifications such as the Sydney Teachers’ College lecturers, there was an all-important exception on the grounds of financial hardship for women whose combined family income was less than five pounds per week.
Thousands appealed over the next 15 years of the Act.
‘Hardship’ was prevalent. Aside from the women who protested that they had married and committed to mortgage payments believing their positions were permanent, many women were supporting husbands incapacitated in the first world war or supporting multi generation families while their husbands were unemployed.
The United Associations of Women and NSW Teachers Federation activists objected to the means testing involved and the intimate details required in the annual application, questions asked on no-one else in the community.
Of the 854 married women employed in November 1932, 725 were exempted, mostly due to hardship.
For Miss Winifred McEwen, infants mistress of Glebe Public School, with a 21 year career behind her, she had the choice in 1936 to continue her exemplary work as a teacher or lose income and status by getting married.
She married Kenneth Anderson on 31 March 1936 and her services were immediately terminated.
Letter to May Anderson (new McEwen) terminating her services as Infants’ Mistress Glebe Infants School as at 31 March 1936 under Section 3 of the Married Women’s Act 1932-35. Memorandum terminating services (2025-52)
Repealing the Act
The second world war resulted in fewer male teachers and a consequent growing need for women teachers, married or not, however the Act was not repealed, apparently from concern that this would deprive the returning servicemen of their jobs. Understaffed schools resulted in class sizes ballooning to up to 70 children in classrooms and public demand brought the repeal before Cabinet in September 1944, but no action was taken.
During this period in the years 1943 to 1947, Winifred Anderson was temporarily employed under Section 2 (1) of as an assistant teacher in the infants departments of Mascot and Penrith Public Schools.
| 2. (1) After the commencement of the Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Amendment Act, 1935, no married woman shall be appointed to the Department of Public Instruction as a lecturer or teacher unless the Board certifies to the Minister that there are special circumstances which make her employment for a period specified in the certificate desirable in the public interest. |
By 1947, the year the Act was finally repealed, there were 1200 married women, one twelfth of the teaching force, in temporary employment ‘terminable at the will of the teacher or the department’. Each one was required to answer questions to be reinstated for another year although the shortage of teachers was so acute that renewal had been automatic since 1940.
Once the Act was repealed Mrs Winifred Anderson could return to the work she loved and excelled in.
Now in her mid 50s, she was again receiving paeans of praise from the school inspector as shown in her 1949 inspector’s report, teaching Class 1A with an enrolment of 40 pupils, at Penrith Public School.
Comments on Mrs Winifred Anderson’s work from Report of Inspector upon Teacher dated 27 July 1949. NSW Schoolhouse Museum of Public Education collection. Report of Inspector Upon Teacher Winifred Anderson (2025-53)
Winifred Anderson had had to make a choice between two loves, her teaching career, and her husband. In December 1949 she was finally transferred to permanent staff as a List A Mistress, having agreed in writing in 1946 to serve anywhere in the state. Due to her home situation, she continued as an assistant teacher at Penrith then Tamworth West and Nundle Public Schools until December 1952.
Winifred Anderson’s inspection report date 23 May 1951 acknowledges her competence as a teacher and school leader. This extract shows her status as permanent and promotion status as ‘List A’ from 1949. Report of Inspector Upon Teacher Winifred Anderson (2025-54)
Winifred served her final years as a Class A Infants Mistress at Panania then Woollahra Public School in 1955 – where she had commenced her career 40 years earlier.
In 1959 NSW women teachers won the right for equal pay for equal work but Winifred Andersen was 65 by then and did not benefit, retiring from Drummoyne Public School in September 1959.
End notes
The Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act 1932 was not unique to NSW or Australia and similar bills were enacted across the world.
The NSW Schoolhouse Museum holds letters received by May McEwen Anderson, inspector reports, photographs and texts relating to her teaching career, donated in 2002.
Banner image – Winifred Anderson, then McEwen, is seated bottom left in this photograph of Sydney Teachers College tennis group, 1913 or 1914 (2025-48).
Transcripts – Transcripts of documents on this page
References and further reading
Australian Screen. 1983. For love or money. [online] Available at: https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/love-or-money/clip2/
Cusack, Dymphna. 1942. Morning Sacrifice (play). [online]. Available at: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/08/morn-a08.html
Mackinolty, Judy. 1979. ‘To stay or to go: sacking married women teachers’ in Judy Mackinolty and Heather Radi (eds), In Pursuit of Justice: Australian women and the law 1788-1979, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, pp. 140-47
Mitchell, Bruce. 1975. Teachers, Education and Politics: a history of organisations of public school teachers in New South Wales, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, p 113
Museums of History NSW. Married women teachers’ applications, 1932–35. Available at: https://mhnsw.au/articles/married-women-teachers-applications/
Museums of History NSW. State Archives. 15320-1-2 Teacher career cards Winifred May Anderson
Parliament New South Wales. Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act 1932 [online]. Available at: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/historicbills/files/11322/Various%20Versions%201.pdf
Parliament New South Wales. Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Amendment Act 1935 [online]. Available at: https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/pdf/asmade/act-1935-49
Sydney Morning Herald. 1910. 24 December 1910. Probationary student scholarships. [online]. Available at: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15216401?searchTerm=winifred%20mcewan%20tamworth
Theobald, Marjorie, and Donna Dwyer. 1999. ‘An Episode in Feminist Politics: The Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act, 1932-47.’ Labour History, no. 76 (1999): 59-77.
Author – This story was written by Jo Henwood, NSW Schoolhouse Museum. Jo is also a well known storyteller, guide and museum educator. Edits by Gaye Braiding, NSW Schoolhouse Museum, as further information on Winifred Anderson became available.