Source B, an article taken from the satirical magazine ‘Punch’ is more useful than source A due to it being written in the middle of the war (1916) and detailing some of the occupations now available to women. However, it also shows an opinion and is not backed up with any evidence. The article also has a patronising attitude to the female workers and makes clear that the jobs for women are only due to the war, and afterwards society will return to normal.
Source C is an extract from Monica Cosens, from a book/leaflet entitled ‘Lloyd George’s Munitions Girls’ from 1916. This would have been a piece of propaganda designed to raise morale amongst British citizens. It will therefore put across a positive view of women in the workplace. She describes how she overcame her initial nervousness and how her job helped her gain “confidence” and she soon found the work to be “wonderful”’ Not only were middle and upper class women forced to work because of a shortage of labour during WWI, some also did it for personal reasons such as self discovery and learning new skills. This source supports the idea that the war was a turning point for women as it shows that there was opportunity to be able to work and that new skills could be learnt, perhaps to start a new career outside of the domestic sphere.
Source D is from a regional newspaper called the ‘Liverpool Daily Post’, it states that a woman’s place shouldn’t necessarily be within a domestic sphere, “Certainly the ordinary man in the street holds that view, but it is not the only one”. This article was written after the war in 1919, when the soldiers were returning from war and would need their old jobs back or would need to get new ones.
Source E backs up the suggestions made in A and C, saying, "three hundred women have refused to accept work in domestic service." This shows that some women have gained confidence by this point by working in munitions, and feel they are above domestic service. This source also shows how the male attitude doesn't change, as the government refused to pay unemployment benefit to women refusing to work in domestic service. It quite blatantly does not believe that the war was a turning point for women. This is contradicted by Source D, which gives evidence of a change in attitude, talking about the "old myth that a woman's sphere is in the home", suggesting that this was no longer the commonly held belief. However this source cannot be generalised as it is just telling us of the situation in Liverpool, as described in a regional paper, and is not representative of Britain.
Sources F and G are both statistical sources from modern history books. Source F shows an increase in commerce and industrial work for women between 1911-21 for female employment in the Woolwich area (known for its munitions factories). It appears to be suggesting that the war was a turning point for women, yet this source is has only limited use because it is localised to the Woolwich area and does not show percentages, only figures, so we cannot tell if the number of women living in the area at the time rose or the number of female workers rose. Source G contradicts source F and tells us that the amount of women working between 1911 and 1931 decreased by 1%. This may have been because of the depression in the late twenties however.
Source G isn’t anymore useful than source F. This source isn’t region specific and shows all the statistics in percentages. From this source you can see there wasn’t much long-term change after the war, but the statistics range from 1911 to 1931, with no middle dates covered by any data. It is impossible to tell whether this source believes that the war was a turning point for women.
Source H is taken from a modern history book and prophesised that “women will not want to return to their domestic duties after the war”. This shows that this source believes that the war was a turning point but it also has no factual evidence and is comprised solely of assertion.
The sources all have fairly different views and reasons on whether or not the First World War was a turning point for women, and some sources are more reliable than others. The trend amongst them is that that the war was a turning point for women but they do not all agree on whether it was a change for the better.
