I started earning money at age 13 playing twice a week for a dancing class. Earning £2per week I saved this to buy a precious radio called Garth.
Leaving university with a BA in Sociology and History of Fine Arts in 1954, Dr Biesheuvel [husband of the woman who ran the women’s residence and responsible for the women there] suggested I join the NIPR to do psychological research.
This I did until 1958 when I went to the UK. There I worked in market research with Gallup Poll until joining the Government Social Survey training interviewers in 1959.
Geoffrey Thomas then asked me if I would come and work with him developing the International Passenger Survey at Heathrow, Manchester Prestwick Gatwick and Hern. And then the end of the liners, at Southampton, Liverpool and elsewhere.
Tourism was just starting and people went abroad by foot from ferries from Dover and Folkestone to Calais Boulogne and Ostend. A few people also flew over to France – from Kent and by car [4 at a time] from Lydd to Beauvais. The bulk of people therefore went by foot from Dover, joining trains and coaches on the other side.
I trained and supervised interviewers until 1965 when I returned to South Africa.
There I joined ICT as a software-programmer for less than a year.
At the end of 1965, I returned to the UK to join Geoffrey and to once again briefly become a software-programmer.
Luckily the training manager got agreement to provide training for supervisors and I interviewed to find out their learning needs.
Feeling that personnel staff were undertrained and ineffective, I went to LSE for a year to study Personnel Management.
At the end, I rejoined ICL for a time at Reading.
But needing something new [and money prior to Geoffrey’s retirement], I decided to learn about take away food, then a new phenomenon, and so I bought a fish and chips caravan. This lasted for probably less than a year.
Luckily Nancy Seear had got funds from the Department of employment to research the effects of the Equal Pay act, and the upcoming Sex Discrimination Act. I did this from 1974-78.
Between 1978 and 1981, after my proposal to the German Marshall Fund was accepted, we carried out action research on women’s employment in several European banks drawing on Affirmative Action in US banks. Initially we were working with French researchers but were then joined by Attie from Netherlands and Monique from Belgium. Funding increased to include money from Department of Employment, Manpower Services Commission, Equal Opportunities Commission, European Commission and various European funders.
This ended in 1982 with a conference in Knokke Belgium followed by my starting consultancy in Midland bank.
This was followed by research and consultancy on the secretarial role, and in Susan and me starting Women in Banking which is still running.
Secretarial Development Network
The Glass Ceiling
I worked at City University on women’s employment and then there with the Centre for Disability Management.
Interested in helping communities in South Africa, I went to South Bank University to get an MA in International Development.
I did not find an NGO suitable to work with and support and so Susan and I started Thatu in 2004.
