CO-OPERATIVE stores had a reputation for being progressive in the way they looked after staff and customers but 50 years ago were still a long way from pay equality between men and women.

An advertisement from the Evening Mail – which would not be legal today – offered different rates for people doing the same jobs.

These differences were commonplace at shops, factories and offices but direct comparison is difficult because firms advertised most jobs as being for men or women only.

On June 21 in 1966 The Ulverston Co-operative Society was looking for school leavers and was very specific about what was wanted.

Clerks in the general office and assistants in the drapery department had to be women.

Assistants in the furnishing and butchery departments had to be men.

The grocery department was the only place in 1966 when both men and women would be considered as young assistants.

At the age of 15 the weekly pay was 104 shillings (£5.20) for males and 86 shillings (£4.30) for females.

For those aged 16 the rates were 114 shillings and sixpence (£5.72) against 98 shillings (£4.90).

The difference in pay is around 16 per cent.

Equality was king when it came to dealing with trading profits made by co-operative societies.

There were no shareholders and no bonuses to pay to directors.

A regular dividend, or “divi” distributed surpluses between members in direct proportion to what they had spent or anything from fruit and vegetables to coal and furniture.

Many of the societies also put money aside for education and community projects.

Some of this work is described in a 1995 book on the history of the Co-op in Lancashire called More Than Just a Shop which was spotted in a Lancaster charity shop.

The book noted: “Smaller societies in the north of the county, such as Dalton-in-Furness, also spent a proportion of its income on education resulting, by 1893, in the provision of four reading rooms, the purchase of 100 daily and weekly newspapers and 35 monthly magazines.”

The Gilsland Spa Hotel, in the north of Cumbria, was bought for £21,000 in 1901 by the co-operative movement as a convalescent home.

The co-operative movement started in the 1820s and by 1844 the Rochdale Pioneers set the modern standard for a shop-based society which spread all over the country and overseas.

A society was founded in Barrow in 1860 and the following year in Dalton and Swarthmoor.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society developed several factories in the Manchester area to supply the new shops with goods.

By the 1880s the book notes that the Kirkby society had expanded into selling groceries, meat and footwear while the Grange society had its own tailoring department and had coal deliveries.

Amalgamation has seen a drastic reduction in the number of societies with just a few – such as Conistion and Hawkshead trading as independents.

The book noted: “The number of societies nationally fell dramatically from 467 in 1967 to 312 in 1976 and only 55 in 1994.”