Traditional attitudes to women still persisted within male-dominated post war British society, for example women were still considered to lack the flexibility for employment in the civil service and on marrying female nurses, were still expected to retire from the profession. The trades union responded by enlisting that women employed on men’s jobs be granted equal pay and this was agreed to by the government in the March 1915 Treasury Agreement. This idea stimulated much discussion of the equal pay principle, but it was also to protect the men’s wage rate, but little consideration was given to the economic justice for women. After qualified women aged 50 and above were enfranchised in 1918, the Coalition Government gave their support through the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. It although removed barriers to women’s employment such as the marriage bar, the act contained language that could discriminate females. The aftermath of the First World War used women as a reserve of cheap labour and a temporary substitution for men.
Women were frowned upon in the first stages after the War but also gaining some legal benefits from the government.
After the war, many women lost their jobs as more and more men were returning home. 950,000 of women were working in government during the war, after it the number of women had dropped by 32%, 175,000 women were working in munitions factories and had dropped by 12.5% and women in office work had also dropped from 125,000 to 90,000. However there were some rises in women employment after the war; women in transport had risen 11% and women in agriculture had risen 10%. Women were expected to return to their low paid domestic jobs. The government did not realise women whose husbands had died needed to get jobs that paid a descent wage to support the family. Women stood their ground and did not revert back to household jobs as statistics show an 82% drop in employment in domestic work.
Yet the valuable experiences of the war could not be taken away from women. Women had proved they were capable of doing work that before the war had only been done by men. They had earned higher wages and made new friendships. Many young women tasted independence when they had moved away from home. Others had been involved in campaigns for peace low rents, and equal pay with men. Women self image and confidence could not be taken away from them. The movement to secure votes for women had begun in Manchester with the protests and petitions of 2 women; Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. She had helped find the Women’s Suffrage League, and later the Women’s Social and Political Union. By the general election of 1918, women were entitled to vote for the first time. By 1919 women could do jury service, become lawyers and joined the civil service. Women were admitted to Oxford and Cambridge universities. A state register of nurses was set up, so nursing became a respectable profession. By 1921 women could claim unemployed benefit and women were entitled to pensions.
Many people thought that the war had brought about a revolution in women’s lives. Financially they were better off and socially they were free. During the war women had got used to things they had been frowned upon before, such as smoking, going out alone, and wearing short shirts. Politically their positions improved and many people in 1920 were talking about the ‘new woman’. The war had really changed the job opportunities for women. It not only revolutionized the industrial positions of woman, but also revolutionized men’s minds and conceptions of the start of work, which the ordinary everyday women could not do. The war had changed lives for women everywhere. By 1920, woman had made an important progress towards legal, social and professional equality and for the first time women had tasted freedom.
