The change in the suffragettes’ attitudes was almost instant. As soon a the Prime Minister read the declaration they stopped lobbying and attacking the MP’s and got behind the government and showed full support for them. Emily Pankhurst, the leader of their group became friends with an MP who was later to become the prime minister, this stood them in good stead at that time as they now had a contact in the houses of parliament and in the future when he became prime minister he would be friends of the leader of this movement, they worked together on many things. The suffragettes began to organise rallies to gain interest into the war, they collected luxury items to send out to the soldiers, such as chocolate, whisky, cigarettes but often-unwanted gifts were sent, like Bibles and storybooks. They also boycotted the men, they wouldn’t go out with any of the men who weren’t out at war, and if they saw a man out of uniform in the street they would give them a white feather of cowardice. This showed public support for the government and was another part of the propaganda, there were posters everywhere, perhaps the most famous was Kitcheners ‘I want YOU!’ poster. The country became besotted with the war effort; it was and still is the most popular war there has ever been.
Lord Kitchener, a retired general who was now minister for war, asked for 100,00 men to sign up but due to the wars popularity, by 1916 he had 2,600,000 new recruits. The bulk of these were in the first few months of the war, the recruitment offices were swamped, people cued for hours and lads as young as 14 wanted to sign up and often lied to get in. Even more of an incentive was that the army had set up ‘Pals regiments’, which were made up of streets, football teams and in some cases whole school years. The regular army were sent off to war first, they were mobbed by hoards of women trying to get attention and when they arrived in France they were mobbed even more. They often wrote back to there younger brothers and told them what they were missing; this led to a sudden influx of lads trying to get a piece of action. The popularity of the war was sky high and building as the media and the expectancy of it being over by Christmas hyped it up.
This sudden departure of all the working men was a problem, immediately there were hundreds of thousands of job vacancies thrown into the open. Often they were filled with the newly retired and school leavers. Women were still not given the jobs. The only women who immediately got jobs were when their husbands owned a business and could only trust their wives with the work, such as a milk round or a coal round, others went into the health service as ambulance drivers, the middle class women who could drive, and the women who couldn’t drive became nurses. The working class women couldn’t afford to do anything else, as they needed to carry on working to keep their families alive. Some men did stay but only if they worked in essential industries such as the coalmines or agriculture, industries thought too precious to deplete during the war.
Immediately, there was no real urgency for women to work, the employers chose lads who had just left school and newly retired men but these soon ran out. Many didn’t make it to retiring age due to poor health so something else was needed. Attitudes held back the entrance for women to enter the working environment as they were still thought to not be able to do a mans job and they were left at the bottom of the pile for jobs. Some got jobs through family ties straightaway, e.g. milk rounds, chimney sweeps etc. They were given these jobs so that there husbands had the job to come back to but for many it was a chance to prove themselves and many loved the work. They could only do unskilled jobs though.
Also during the war there was an increasing demand for typists, telephone operators and secretaries, even though these jobs had been around but the were now expanding rapidly and needed more staff and the women were the perfect option.
Another area that women could move into was the munitions factories, these were not pleasant jobs so women were more likely to be forced into working in these environments. One of the reasons that they were so dangerous was due to the Germans advances into attacking by air. There huge Zeppelin air ships were bombers. They would attack the munitions factories; the most famous was the Woolwich Royal Arsenal factory. It was the largest and most productive factory providing the men at the frontline with bullets and shells for the artillery. They were also prone to explosions and little mistakes in the manufacturing process could cause catastrophic destruction.
Around 1 million women worked in the munitions factories around the country. The factories were a terrible environment to work in, they were dangerous, they stank and the chemicals used were awful. The acid they used would get all over them as there was no protective clothing for them to wear. There were people employed to keep order in the factories that showed the environment was hostile in more ways than one. In a large munitions factory there would often be between 16 and 18 casualties per night!, either from an injury or just the women falling ill.
The lack of knowledge about the chemicals used in the making of the munitions caused terrible suffering to the women at the time and in the future. Many women became sick from TNT poisoning, the first signs was a common cold but they would quickly deteriorate and die a painful death and few survived. You would not go un-noticed in the streets either, the chemicals would turn the skin on the face yellow and the hair ginger. This is why they acquired the nickname ‘The Canaries’. All of the women working there would become too sick to have children or not be able to have children due to the chemicals.
There was a plus side to the job, it was well paid and gave the women more independence and when travelling to work on the train many men would say that they were doing their bit.
Another main area that the women could move into was to train to be a nurse and go out to the hospitals near the frontline to tend to the soldiers, there was a great demand for this and the army turned to the women, as often all of their male family members had signed up and this was enough of an incentive for them to aswell. The main influx of women was from the middle classes rather than the working class because of their attitudes. The middle class women were brought up with the motto “For king and country”; where as the lower working class had not and were more sceptical in joining the forces. There were 2 main groups of nurses the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachments) and the FANY (First Aid Nursing Auxiliary), both of these groups were poorly paid and had been part time nurses before the war so had the basic training to deal with some of the injuries. They were not treated any differently to the men that were doing the same job.
Extract from Elizabeth, Baroness de T’Serclaes autobiography. “We slept in our clothes and cut our hair short so that it would tuck into our caps. Dressing meant simply putting on our boots in the morning……… There were times when we had to scrape lice off our clothes with the blunt edge of a knife and our underclothes stuck to us.”
This shows that they were treated the same and with that had to suffer the same hardships that the men had too. The wards they worked in were noisy from the screams of men and gramophones. Definitely not the way the fairy tales portrayed them. One negative point for the women who had signed up was that they didn’t actually know what was going on at the front and it gave them a lot of time to think.
In 1917 many soldiers were lost in the big battles. The generals were getting worried that they would run out of men. To make sure they didn’t they needed to recruit the men that were doing all the ‘soft jobs’ to the front line, but they needed people to replace them. For this they set up the WAAC, Women’s’ Army Auxiliary Corps. The plan was for these women to do all the menial but necessary jobs, such as, cooking, cleaning, waitressing, secretarial work and also to instruct the public how to put on a gas mask. They were given ranks to keep the structure an uniforms were also issued, a tight khaki cap, khaki jackets and skirts which had to be no more than 12 inches from the ground. Despite this the women in the WAAC were not given full military status. The women enrolled rather than being enlisted therefore were not to be punished by a military court but a civil one. Between 1917 and the end of the war over 55000 women had served in the WAAC. Even though they were not in combat duties they had to endure shelling attacks and bombing raids and when nine were killed the newspapers were outraged and publicised it as another atrocious act of the Germans, but they were there to replace soldiers so they had every right to attack them.
At the start of the Great War thousands of farmers signed up even before conscriptions were introduced and still after two years of war the farmers had not been replaced and there was a huge shortage of food. In 1916 when conscriptions were introduced making it illegal not to sign up the farmers and miners were exempt from this law due to the shortage of food and fuel. There was even more of a need for food because of the German U-boats, which were sinking every food ship insight and leaving little reaching our shores with their vital cargo. At this time half of the country’s’ food was imported and now there was none so the land army was set up. Thousands of women from the cities went to work the and just to keep enough food for the citizens of the country to survive. They had to produce enough food to eliminate the need for all the wheat imports from Canada and the meat from Australia but they succeeded.
This immense change in the role of women had a dramatic affect on the attitude towards women. In the war work the WAAC suffered the same hardships a s the men. But not in all cases, they suffered them in the cushy jobs, such as, the nurses and cooks but nowhere near as much as the men at the front line did. In 1917 the army were getting desperate with 12,000 trained men behind the lines they needed to release them to fight. Their only choice was to allow the women to come in and take over the more menial jobs. But under no circumstances were they allowed to fight in the frontline.
The trade unions were also very wary of the women as they thought that in the long run they would work for lower wages than the men and take over their jobs for good. But, in 1915 the government and the trade unions came to an agreement specifying that women were to be paid as much as the men for the duration of the war ant for as long as needed until sufficient male labour came available.
The attitudes towards women had changed but not to the extent that they could have wished for. For example, in the war areas, “the women had no special privileges and suffered the same hardships as the men they replaced.” This was true to a certain extent, they did suffer the hardships but this was only of the men which they replaced who where the men doing the menial jobs behind the lines, nowhere near the amount of suffering faced by the men at the frontline. In 1917 there were 12,000 women working behind the lines freeing the men up for fighting. The attitudes of the army personnel were that they were thankful to the women for freeing up the men who were needed to fight. This was all due to the WAAC.
The trade unions had not changed their attitudes much. They were still very suspicious towards the women. They believed that the women who were given jobs in the munitions factories would not leave after the war as they would undercut the wages of the men coming back from the front. However, in 1915 the government and the trade unions came to an agreement. This was that the women were paid the same as the men but when the men came back the women would have to leave after the duration of the war.
Before the war the media had been giving negative propaganda against the women and suffragettes but during the war the medias attitudes changed immensely. The Observer, J L GAVIN 1916 “ Time was when I thought that men alone maintained the state. Now I know that men alone never could have maintained it.” This was a paper, which before the war was very negative towards women and you can see by this quote that their attitudes had changed. It was a major change for the women, from being dumbed down to being relied upon to run the state while all the men were fighting for it.
The governments attitudes was also changing. Here is a speech by Lloyd George during his role as prime minister, 1918. “It would have been utterly impossible for us to have won the war had it not been for the skill, enthusiasm and industry which the women of this country have thrown into the war.” Lloyd George was the minister for munitions during the war and had set up a good relationship with Emily Pankhurst and they had been setting up good ties throughout the government and when he became prime minister the attitudes he had towards the women wanting the vote was favourable. Before the war the party (lib dems) were split on the suffragettes but now Lloyd George was PM he brought them together behind the women. In 1917 6 of the 11 million adult women were given the vote through the law that middle class women should be able to vote. It was passed with only 23 votes against, a landslide result, which just showed how much the attitudes had changed.
During the war the women’s attitudes changed rapidly. Before the war the men in the country oppressed them immensely, but because of their experiences during the war they had to change. There work as nurses in the war gave them a chance to go abroad alone which gave them more independence and the things they saw were atrocious. They would have to treat and look after soldiers and civilians with limbs blown off, deep flesh wounds and often, horrendous burns. They showed that they could cope with this work well and begun to earn the respect of the men. Again as a result of the war women were put under stress and fear of receiving a telegram from the forces saying that their loved one, husband, son or brother, had been killed in battle. With the start of huge battles, such as the battle of the Somme, where 20,000 were killed and 60,000 injured in the first day, some mothers lost all their sons in one attack, this caused great suffering for the women back in this country. To pay respect to these men, women wore black dresses and the men wore a black armband.
Their fashions changed aswell. Women started to wear trousers as they were more practical for their everyday work and general mobility was easier dressed like this. The men didn’t like this as traditionally the men wore the trousers and they were getting worried as they though that the women would begin turn into men and do as men do, such as: drinking, smoking and swearing. Despite this some women had already started smoking in public and going to coffee houses with their friends, this would have been quite shocking for that time.
Now that women were working in the factories and less restricting jobs they had greater financial freedom, this meant that they could afford to do all the pleasant things they wanted to do, such as, going to coffee houses etc. Before the war the largest employer was the domestic service, a very undesirable area of work, now there were munitions factories opening all over the country calling out for women to work in them. Although they weren’t getting as much as the men in the munitions factories they were getting much more money and freedom than if they were still in the domestic service. Generally, a more appealing job.
This new surge into the munitions factories meant that there were 18-19 year old women earning more than their fathers, this increased the resentment that their fathers already had towards them having a job at all. Plus they weren’t married so had no one to make decisions for them so they, again, had more freedom.
Women’s attitude to sex had also changed. It was no longer a taboo subject but an everyday occurrence. Before the war you would not have even seen a women and man kissing in the street but now things had turned upside down. There was a new attitude to life with many soldiers being killed abroad they began to live for the moment and had sex much more often, sometimes in public. Due to this the number of illegitimate children shot through the roof.
As a result of the war things had changed in some ways, for some women. For many women, especially working class enjoyed their war work. This meant that they could escape their homes and to support them financially, it did wonders for their confidence and their hectic social lives introduced them to the real world. When surveyed over 2500 out of 3000 women wanted to keep their jobs after the war.
Of course the numbers working in the munitions factories decreased because the weapons and munitions were no longer needed now that the war was over but other opportunities were closing for the women. Men expected the women to go back to the domestic service “where they belonged”. They assumed that they could go back to living on a working mans wage and the women who stayed in their jobs were doing it out of selfishness.
But, despite this, it was not the case for the women who lost their husbands in the war. They needed to carry on working to carry out the mans responsibility of bringing in the money. With three women to every two men, one in three women had to support their family alone. The war had made many women poorer. The cost of living had gone up but the wages had either stayed the same or stopped altogether. Women who had lived off small allowances or fixed incomes could do so for no longer.
Women who kept their jobs to support their families, who were once praised as heroines, were now being called “Blacklegs” for keeping the men out of their jobs. Employers tried to turn them out. Also trade unions took big steps out of their way to criticise the women, many were turned out, some willingly but most had no choice, especially when men’s unemployment hit an all time high after the war. There were now fewer working women than before the war!
The evidence so far suggests that the war itself did not bring any major changes to the role and status of women. Some women did stay on unchallenged. These were the secretaries, telephonists and clerks. The war was to see the last of the male clerks. The women only kept these jobs, as many men didn’t want them.
There was a steady decline in the domestic service, but some women did go back to working in this sector as there was nothing else for them, for most it was reluctant but it was a last resort. Younger women just didn’t want the job anymore.
A government enquiry into the shortage of domestic servants found that they were 400,000 short. They had to make changes and that they did. The bill created changes to entice the women back in, it included, fixed meal times, days off, paid holidays, a changed uniform, better food and the introduction of new labour saving appliances. The bill didn’t work. In 1931 there was no longer a domestic service but a new sector in the personal service. If there hadn’t been a war the change would not have been so rapid.
The years after the war there were several changes lining up for the women:
- 1918-The representation of people act was brought in which offered the chance for females to become MP’s in the parliament to represent the women.
- 1919-This was the year of the first female MP to sit in on a parliament session. Lady Nancy Astor. The first was Countess Markowicz, but she did not sit in on the parliament. Also this was the year that the sex disqualification act was brought in so the women could not be sacked from their jobs for being pregnant for example.
- 1923-Equal rights in the divorce proceedings. This gave the women more of a chance if they ever were to get divorced, where before the war everything went to the husband.
- 1925-Another opportunity opened for the women, the civil service started to accept women.
- 1928-In 1918 some middle-class women were given the vote but now there were full voting rights for everyone over 21. This is what they had campaigned for, for so long.
- 1930-It was the first time that contraception advice was given to women.
This shows that things were changing in the favour of women in Britain.
A survey was done in Southampton after the war. It surveyed what type of work women had been doing during the war and what they were doing now that the war was over. Here are some of their findings.
This table shows that not all women were given their jobs back after the war but some kept them.
Overall I think that the war had a major affect on the role and status of women. It may not have been instant but it set the grounding for everything to come. It showed to all the men in the country that they were just as good as them and should be given the same opportunities and respect from them.
