The interwar decades were a fertile period for non-fiction books that provided advice and guidance on how to self-improve your life. As well as health and fitness books and books on how to take up new hobbies or learn DIY skills, publishers also put out a steady stream of books that purported to help readers establish a new career. In 1927, George Allen & Unwin publishers produced Careers for Girls, a practical guide written by one Eleanor Page.

Careers for Girls was part of a series of self-help books. The book’s opening sentence immediately set out its purpose:

This work has been compiled to assist girls who have to earn a livelihood to choose a sphere of work suited to their individual gifts and temperaments, and by which they may earn a happy and comfortable living; and for the more favoured girls anxious to develop any talent they may be endowed with, so that they may take their rightful place in the scheme of things.

Immediately the book distinguishes between two types of ‘girls’ (really, young women): those who have to earn a living, and those who have some private income to rely on but have a drive to make a contribution to society, based on their skills and talents. Almost all the career paths covered in Careers for Girls are registered professions, which require formal schooling and certification, which in turn require financial investment to pay for classes and examination fees.

Although most of the roles described in Careers for Girls don’t appear to be particularly exclusive to a modern reader, in the interwar period compulsory schooling stopped at 14. Secondary schools charged tuition fees; the only way for a child of a working-class family to attend was through obtaining a scholarship. Only 14% of all teenagers went on to a secondary school; and only a fraction of those went on to University.[1]

Whilst women were allowed to attend university and could now even obtain a degree, the overall proportion of female students remained very low.[2] So when Careers for Girls advised that to become a librarian, you could complete on-the-job training as long as you had a secondary school diploma, this career would not be accessible to 86% of the population.[3] To become a musician was even more difficult: a qualification at either a University or the Royal College of Music/Royal College of Art would be expected.[4] When the book’s opening therefore distinguishes two types of ‘girls’, it wholly ignores the vast majority of young women for which the pursuit of a skilled profession was completely out of reach.

The rest of Careers for Girls is divided up in chapters, each of which covers a different area of work. Teaching and nursing – two roles traditionally associated with women – make an appearance, as do accounting, civil service, journalism, social service and many others. By 1927, Britain suffered from a surplus of women, as the impact of the Great War, and the thousands of young men who had died on the front, continued to be felt.

Guides like Careers for Girls gave young women ideas to an alternative to domestic married life. The pursuit of a career rather than marriage would have been a necessity to many. Tellingly, a number of the advertised professions, such as nursing and teaching, generally came with room and board. These roles provided a solution to the single woman who had no family members with whom she could, or wanted to, live.

Careers for Girls also gives estimated salary expectations for all posts. One of the more lucrative careers included is the top rung of the Civil Service, the “Administrative Class”. In order to obtain a position here, a woman had to meet the standard criteria for all Civil Service positions, namely be a British subject with a British father, unmarried, at least 5 feet tall and of certified good health.[5] “In the highest branch of the Service – the Administrative Class – candidates must be twenty-two to twenty-four years of age. The standard of education for examination is equal to that for a University Degree.” After meeting all these criteria (and remaining single, as the Civil Service operated a Marriage Bar), Careers for Girls stated that a woman could enjoy an annual salary of up to £550. However, in reality, Administrative Class posts in the Civil Service were only theoretically open to women – no women actually penetrated to this level of work.[6]

The jobs that appeared to give the young woman the chance of the highest salary, without requiring extensive or expensive training, were those in the distinctly modern fields of media and advertising. Eleanor Page claims that ‘Good positions, with salaries from £500 to £2,000 a year, are open to the woman advertising expert. (…) a university degree or large amount of capital are not required.’[7] Both marketing and press firms ‘prefer to take girls from school and train them to their own methods’, making formal qualifications a hindrance rather than a help.[8]

Similarly, it is telling which careers appear to be not for ‘girls’: glaringly absent are, for example, doctor or surgeon – although Elizabeth Garrett Anderson qualified as both in 1865. Women can train to become secretaries, but not board members; chief assistant librarian but not head librarian; a staff manager, but not the head of the business. Ultimately, Careers for Girls provided a small sub-section of British women with suggestions for professions that were acceptable for them to pursue within the prevailing social norms of the period. The book likely allowed some women to plan out a career trajectory, but for many more its advice would have been so far removed from their day-to-day experience that it was no help whatsoever.

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[1] Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars 1918-1939 (London: Pandora, 1989), p. 34

[2] Francesca Wade, Square Haunting: Five women, freedom and London between the wars (London: Faber & Faber, 2020), pp. 93-94

[3] Eleanor Page, Careers for Girls (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1927), p. 85

[4] Ibid., p. 81

[5] Ibid., p. 38

[6] Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty, p. 83

[7] Page, Careers for Girls, p. 14

[8] Ibid., p. 73 and p. 14