Use Source G and your own knowledge to explain why some men opposed the employment of women in industry during the First World War. Source G is a personal account written by a women worker

Authors Avatar

Use Source G and your own knowledge to explain why some men opposed the employment of women in industry during the First World War.

  Source G is a personal account written by a women worker, which demonstrates the prejudice that women were shown in the work place during the First World War. It describes scenes of resentment from the women’s male colleagues and made it harder for women to do a good job, “over and over again the foreman gave the wrong or incomplete directions”. There are many reasons why some men may have opposed the work of women in industry during the First World War however I think that one of the main reasons was for fear of loosing their own jobs or receiving less pay at the end of the war because women may have done a good or better job than them in their absence.

   Trade unions were one of the reasons why some men opposed the work of women in industry during the First World War. The government had to make sure that the factories could keep up with the needs of the war. Lloyd George was concerned about the issue of demarcation which was when only skilled workers could do certain jobs. Demarcation meant that there was not enough production in certain areas. In March 1915, Lloyd George developed the Treasury Agreement. This Agreement allowed specialised work could be done by semi skilled or even unskilled workers. He also promised the unions that this change was only a temporary arrangement until the end of the war. He also agreed that the workers doing the skilled jobs would be paid the same regardless if they were skilled or unskilled. He also banned strikes and the workers could be fined for going on strike or missing days of work. If the worker wanted to leave and find a job elsewhere, they had to inform the employer and the employer had to issue them with a leaving certificate.  Without this certificate they would have to wait six weeks before they could get another job. Up until this time, trade unions were mainly made up of men however in 1914 there were 357,000 female members and this increased to more than 1 million members in 1918. I think the reason why so many men opposed women working in industry is that the trade unions thought Lloyd George was trying to lower the men’s wage during the First World War.

Join now!

   During the First World War many men were afraid of being paid less or even loosing their jobs. They thought this because women were willing to be paid less for doing the same job as they had done.  They were afraid that after the war their employers would pay them the same as the women or even give their jobs to the women. Unskilled workers were allowed do skilled workers’ jobs by the end of the war and they were afraid that this low paid work for skilled work was going to continue after the war. This idea is ...

This is a preview of the whole essay