[jtbigwoo]

Fun fact: The rules on coworker dating in the post-WWII era were originally intended to get the woman to quit.

Here's how it worked:

A company would hire a bunch of high school or college grads. Young women would get hired as secretaries at a salary of $X. Young men would get hired as salesmen, clerks, etc. at a salary of $X+Y. There would be plenty of time to socialize at the company cafeteria, office parties, and happy hour. Naturally, many of the young men and women would start dating. When they announced they were getting married, they'd get hauled in to the boss's office and told that one of them had to quit. It was then strongly implied that it should be the woman since her salary wasn't going to support both of them and she didn't have much upward mobility. This created openings so you could hire a new crop of young women ready to be paid poorly and marry the next crop of young men.

[teacup50]

That fun "fact" claims a degree of nefarious plotting that requires at least a smidgen of evidence.

[bzbarsky]

You may want to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_bar and especially its references.

[teacup50]

Which doesn't support the above description of firing women for the purpose of hiring a new younger crop at lower wages.

[bzbarsky]

Oh, the exact purpose of forcing married women out of the workforce varied depending on whom you asked. But the wikipedia article does explicitly give

> Marriage bars provided more opportunity for those whom proponents viewed as "actually" needing employment, such as single women.

as a claimed reason for marriage bars, which is actually quite similar to "firing for the purpose of hiring younger people", though it's being spun as for people's good, not to decrease salary expenses.

[teacup50]

In a world where 1) traditional gender roles and family units are the norm, 2) jobs are known to be a finite commodity, and 3) employers are expected to provide adequate wages and benefits such that employees can support their entire family, then it stands to reason that is a fairly straightforward example of benevolent sexism.

[bzbarsky]

I would hesitate to ascribe identical motivations to everyone involved in instituting marriage bars; I expect that there was a variety of reasons people did it. Some people probably did feel like they were doing good for society.

But the effects were somewhat pernicious, because as usual people didn't think about second-order effects. Or in some cases first-order ones, like women delaying marriage so they would not lose their job.