A plaque has been unveiled at Battersea Arts Centre in an honour of Britain’s first female civil servant Jeanie Senior.
Senior became the first female civil servant in 1873, when she was appointed as an inspector of the education of girls in pauper schools and workhouses.
The plaque, unveiled last week, was funded by the FDA and the Battersea Society, with the unveiling event arranged by local historian and writer Jeanne Rathbone.
At the unveiling, FDA president Margaret Haig gave a speech reflecting on the position of women in the civil service today, and ongoing efforts to improve equality for female officials.
She said: “[Senior] spoke truth unto power, championing those values which we still defend as a civil service union: integrity, honesty, objectivity, and impartiality.
“Civil servants today work across all areas which impact on children and young people across society, as well as adults. Women are now inspectors of education, but also of prisons and taxation. Women develop policies to address child poverty, provide a range of apprenticeships, and improve access to appropriate healthcare. Women prosecute cases of violence against women and girls, develop solutions and strategies on climate change, and champion gender equality internationally. Women in these roles, and many more, are represented by the FDA.”
Details of her time as a civil servant are relayed on Martin Stanley’s civilservant.org.uk website, including how her appointment as a civil servant was “fiercely resisted” by male civil servants who provided an “unfriendly atmosphere”.
Stanley's article also mentions that the Treasury's permanent secretary at the time, who was asked to agree to Senior’s permanent appointment, believed it "[opened] a very large question [as] the amount of unemployed [middle/higher class] women is so great that, if anything like ladylike employment is offered, we may expect the utmost pressure to extend it ...[The] attention of the Government should, I think, be called to it".
It also notes that her report into paper schools – published in January 1874 – “caused a public furore with a lengthy (and, on her opponents’ side, a very ungentlemanly) battle with the vested interests of the ‘workhouse establishment’, carried out largely through the letters columns of The Times where she was referred to as “that woman””.
Stanley says Senior “bravely (and politely) stood her ground, and her views began to gain support, but she had to resign as a result of ill-health in December 1874”.
Senior died of 'cancer of the womb' and exhaustion on 24 March 1877, aged 48.
Speakers at the unveiling of the plaque included Senior’s biographer Sybil Oldfield; Fawcett Society chief executive Penny East; Battersea MP Marsha de Cordova; Battersea Arts Centre director Tarek Iskander; and Wandsworth mayor Jeremy Ambache.