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Leading the fight for Gender Equality
Ever one to break new ground and challenge norms, CSSC has been instrumental in developing women’s sports and competition for over a century. To recognise and celebrate this growth for International Women’s Day, we’ve pulled this extract from our centenary book - ‘100 Years of the CSSC’.
Gender Equality, Social Mores and Indoor Recreation
The First World War dramatically changed perceptions of the role of women in the workplace and the number of women and girls employed in the Civil Service and the Post Office had climbed to 223,000 by 1918, almost half of total employees. Despite a significant reduction in their headcount following the end of hostilities, their number still exceeded 100,000 in 1922. However, nationally women struggled to attain parity with their male counterparts, professionally and recreationally, and rarely ascended far up the bureaucratic hierarchy.
Seen but Unheard
At the inaugural meeting of the CSSC in 1921, Curtis-Bennett had spoken of women’s role in raising funds but had largely ignored their role on the sports field. Likewise, a keynote address in The Civilian in January 1922 – ‘Civil Service Sport: Its Future’ – barely mentioned them in passing and the line-up of elected officials to the Provisional Council on 6 February 1922 featured just one woman, Miss K Cassin (Women’s Hockey) from the Savings Bank.
Women’s hockey was well-established in the Civil Service and it was the first dedicated women’s club to appear in the original rollcall of sports associations affiliated to the CSSC. The Civil Service Women’s Hockey Association was formed on 20 April 1922. The Hon. Maude Lawrence was appointed as President, Miss M Squance (Mines Dept) as Chair and Miss Kassin as Hon. Sec. Under Lawrence, an enlightened sports protagonist, the CSWHA wasted no time in buying into the ethos of the CSSC, putting out feelers to form a first representative civil service eleven.
The Hon, Maude Lawrence, 1924
The birth of the CSSC coincided with an inter-war flourish in women’s sports associations and international federations and where the CSWHA led others soon followed with athletics, golf, lawn tennis and rowing all forming themselves into associations.
Powerful lobby groups were also on hand with the Federation of Women Civil Servants noting in their report for the year-ended March 1923 that it had taken a lively and practical interest in CSSC and ‘led the way, subsequently followed by very distinguished persons, in presenting challenge trophies for annual competition’. An example of the latter was the Hon. Maude Lawrence Cup presented to the CS Ladies Golf Club in 1923 which is still competed for today.
Still, Miss Kassin remained a lone voice on the Council and it had yet to put in place any formal structure to address the broader advancement of women’s sport. A nod in the right direction occurred in May 1923 when Miss Marguerite J Bowie was appointed as organiser of a Women’s Advisory Committee with a brief to advise on all matters affecting women’s sports.
Official Recognition
Matters moved surprisingly swiftly thereafter and on 27 October The Civilian reported that ‘One of the most successful meetings ever held in connection with the Sports Council took place last week, when the Hon. Maude Lawrence presided over a meeting composed of representatives of women in every department of the civil service’.
Keen to strike quickly, the meeting agreed to set up a Women’s Committee of the Sports Council to advise on all matters pertaining to women’s sport. Blessed with its own constitution, the committee invited HRH The Duchess of York to be the President and Lawrence to be its Chair.
The committee set itself three key objectives against which it expected its endeavours to be judged: organising and stabilizing women’s sport in the Civil Service; obtaining due recognition and representation on the Council and the Council’s committees; and increasing the number of women shareholders.
The Women’s Committee wasted no time in spreading the word and female membership of the CSSC rose rapidly to reach almost 4,000 by early 1927 or 15% of the total membership.
Leading sportswomen were invited to write in the Civil Service Sports Journal, among them Edith Thompson, President of the All England Women’s Hockey Association and Mrs V M Cambridge, a leading light in the athletics world, who wrote on The Athletic Emancipation of Women. Evening lectures by noted sportswomen attracted large audiences. Maude Lawrence’s contribution to sport was recognized in 1926 when she was made a Dame of the British Empire in the Birthday Honours list.
On the ground, dedicated women’s sports clubs and associations affiliated to the CSSC continued to proliferate, attended by an outpouring of trophies. The Civil Service Women’s Rowing Association made its debut in December 1927, a landmark women’s cricket match was played at Chiswick in July 1928 and the Civil Service Women’s Athletic Club was formed in May 1930.
The Civil Service Women’s Annual One Mile (Swimming) Race at Walton-on-Thames had become a firm fixture by 1930 and was noteworthy for the fact that it was four times longer than the men’s event. A milestone was passed in 1932 when a woman – Miss E Hiscock from the Foreign Office – won the Warren Fisher Cup for the first time.
Job Done!
Shortly before she died in 1933, Dame Maude Lawrence had opined that the Women’s Committee had outlived its usefulness, but she was ahead of her time and her views fell on deaf ears. Some years elapsed before the issue again came up for formal discussion on 16 November 1936 when a meeting of the Women’s Committee agreed that the committee first set up in 1923 had indeed achieved its objectives and should be disbanded.
Ground-breaking as this move may have appeared, what CS sportswomen representatives were really saying was that they had fought and earned the right to sit on the CSSC board as equals. Still, they were not about to jettison their committee without formal undertakings that women would be represented at all levels throughout the CSSC hierarchy. Securing a permanent vice presidency post for a woman was a key proviso. The resolutions proposed at the Women’s Committee were unanimously accepted by the main CSSC management board on 3 December 1936.
The closing years of the inter-war period saw female participation in international rowing regattas – Miss Barnes and Miss Innes – and the All-England Women’s Cricket Association tour of Australia – Miss Morgan and Miss Whelan. At home, the CS Women’s Cricket Team played the Australians at Chiswick in 1937, a match which attracted one of the largest crowds of spectators for a cricket match in some years, and Miss Evelyn Foster, CS Women’s Athletic Club, broke the British record for the mile at the World Amateur Athletics Championships in 1939.
Grace Morgan, Captain of CS Women’s XI vs Australia, 1937
By any measure, women’s sport in the civil service had come a long way since 1921. Hilda Martindale, Chair of the CSWSC, writing in October 1934, sought to underline the progress that had been made by highlighting ‘the huge opportunities now open to women civil servants compared to the days when croquet was considered the most suitable game for them and the riding of a bicycle by a woman was a great innovation’.
Female participation still fell well short of its male counterpart in 1939, but there was a well-founded sense that given the will and the appropriate organizational springboard, women could ‘punch above their weight’.
