Some women worked in factories, mostly in industrial areas in the North of England where there were textile factories. Although the work was hard it was better than being in domestic service because the young girls had more freedom when work was finished, got better paid and had many opportunities to meet, be courted by, and marry fellow workers. Servants had virtually no chance to meet men they could marry if they lived in their employer’s house, other than the boy who delivered bread or other food to the house they worked in. Women who worked in factories had both the money and freedom to dress as they pleased, whereas female servants had to wear that ‘outward and visible sign of servility’, a uniform that showed they were a servant. The servants generally had to pay for their own work uniform. This was hard for them because they were paid so little and the clothes were not of their choice and not useful for anything except being a servant.
Women in factories had much better protection from danger and long hours than women who worked as servants. There were Royal Commissions, parliamentary committees, social activists and unions to take up their cause, leading to reduced working hours and better working conditions. Domestic servants had no unions or MP’s interested in making sure they had good working conditions, as a result, they worked far longer hours than factory workers did. Factory workers worked only about twelve hours a day. The majority were unmarried women, although married women were allowed to work.
A large number of women worked in “the sweated trades”, these were mainly clothing workshops owned by business men but some women had to work in workshops in the houses of their employers, if the employer was especially rich or aristocratic. This kind of work employed up to 1,000,000 women. Their conditions were dreadful and their pay was very low. Some women worked at home and were paid ‘piece rates’, (this was in other words the amount they were paid for each piece they produced). Piece work was good only for the employers. These workers made fine goods like dresses, jewellery, hats, or even painted lead soldiers which was dangerous for their health.
Some women worked in shops, particularly if their family owned the shop. In those days shop hours were not as long as today and while it would have been hard work it would have been pleasanter than being a servant. A few women worked in the professions, which were jobs for highly qualified women who generally had been to university. By 1914, at the outbreak of war, there were women working in a number of the professions, but only in small numbers. Women had been able to become doctors since the 1870’s but by 1900 there were only 212 and this was only rising slowly . However, there was considerable resistance by men to such employment by women. The First World War gave women, especially women doctors a real opportunity for career development.
Most work performed by women before 1914 was low skilled, low paid and involved little or no education in a world dominated and run by men. It was very difficult for women to be promoted. Many people simply thought that women were less capable than men. Before 1876, primary education had not been compulsory and it was not free until 1880. Most of the female population were not as well educated as the men, even if they came from a rich family, it was thought to be more important to educate boys than girls. Women did not have equal rights with men in society, they could not vote, did not get equal pay in any job, only receiving about 2/3 of men’s pay. In most cases women teachers were made to give up their work when they got married unless they ran a school with their husband who was also a teacher.
Some wealthy families educated their sons, but not their daughters because it was expected that women would get married and have children and be provided for by their husbands. The daughters of a wealthy family might be educated at home with a tutor while the boys went away to expensive boarding schools. While the boys learnt Latin and Maths the girls would learn housewifely skills such as letter writing and embroidery. The things they learnt were designed to make them good wives and mothers rather than good business women. At school, the legal leaving age was twelve, but this was only extended by elementary schools for a further two years. Staying at school after the age of twelve meant winning a scholarship as well as paying fees. Working class parents generally were only willing to pay for their sons if they were short of money but not for their daughters. Only ten percent of children attended after the age of twelve and only ten per cent of those ten per cent were girls. This meant only one percent of girls received secondary education. Hence, it was difficult for women to do much to improve their situation: they had fewer rights than men in every part of their lives and could not even vote.
Women generally, whether they were rich or poor, had little freedom to make choices for themselves. They were regarded almost as the possession of their father and had to obey him and if they were married had to obey their husbands. They had few rights over their children , their husbands usually making all the decisions for them. They had no voting rights, other than a few votes for wealthy women in local elections, until 1918 when they could vote with men if they were thirty years old or over. They had to wait another decade to get the same rights as men and vote at twenty-one.
Another factor, which influenced work opportunities for women, was the lack of contraception. In the nineteenth century, methods of birth control were not widely known and it was against the law to give advice about contraception. The middle and upper class woman had greater access to birth control knowledge than working class women. Information became more widely available in the later nineteenth century and contraceptive devices began to be sold at reasonable prices. Despite greater affordability, working class women were left with abstinence or abortion as their only options to limit the number of children they had. Abortion was illegal and very dangerous and women often died from infections they got as a result of the abortion operation. On the eve of war, women had one eighth of the contraceptive opportunities available to women today. If women were pregnant, less of the time, it is reasonable to suggest that they would have had greater opportunities to work outside of the home doing work more interesting and better paid than housework.
The clothing women usually wore in 1914 on the eve of the war would have made many jobs difficult. They wore long dresses and skirts reaching almost to the floor and rich women wore many petticoats under their skirts, long coats and hats and gloves. These clothes would have made it difficult for work in many jobs that men did and even for rushing to get a train to take them to an office in London or another city. Before the outbreak of World War 1 trousers were not considered proper or decent clothes for women to wear. Women were expected to be feminine and not dress like men. Clothing for women was much more comfortable and modern by the time the war ended because more practical clothes were necessary to do the work that men usually did.
In conclusion, just prior to World War 1, the women’s world of work was strictly limited by the factors outlines above , although opportunities had been slowly growing during the previous half century. Women had hoped to improve their lives by getting the right to vote. Groups like the Suffragettes had been demonstrating for years but the men who ran the country still refused to give them the vote. The War gave them an opportunity to improve their working lives in every way and particularly to prove to men they were capable of doing many jobs that had previously been reserved for men.
