Attitudes towards women and their right to vote had changed by 1918. How important was the First World War in bringing about this change?

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Q2) Attitudes towards women and their right to vote had changed by 1918.  How important was the First World War in bringing about this change?

By 1918, when the war had ended, there had been a change of attitude towards women and the right to vote.  The Representation of the People Act gave the vote to some women and before the war all attempts by the women’s movement to get the vote passed through Parliament had failed.  Therefore, the work done by women in the war (1914-1918) proved to be very important in bringing about the change of attitudes towards women and allowing some to vote.  The work done by women in the war was a short-term reason.  Attitudes towards women and giving them the vote had been changing for a long time before this.  There had been improvements in career and education opportunities for women and their rights in the family.  This indicated a change in attitude and improvement in their status.  The women’s movement, the Suffragists and Suffragettes, was also successful in keeping the issue in the public eye, but had failed to get the vote.  Thus there were many reasons why attitudes were changing but work of women in the First World War was probably the main one.

When war broke out in 1914, the Suffragists and Suffragettes stopped their campaigning to concentrate on helping towards the war effort.  They ‘filled in the gap’ left by the men who went out to fight.  The women took over jobs that the men did before and it was this, which changed men’s view towards female suffrage.  There had been a ‘revolution in jobs’ because women started to do jobs only men had done before.  Women had not been considered capable before and at first it was strange for women to be having a totally different role.  There was a big shortage in labour due to the men leaving to fight and in 1916, Britain had up to 2 million workers fewer than they did.  Women were needed to keep the country going.

Women from all different backgrounds took over a variety of different jobs.  Examples were bus conductors, postal workers and the Women’s Land Army was formed in February 1917, to recruit women as farm labourers.  By 1914, 90% of the workers in post offices were women.  The number of women working in transport in 1914 was 18 000 and in 1918 it was 117 000, which showed a large increase.  The number of women working in areas of work such as metals, chemicals, food and drink, timber, transport and Government had all increased from 1914 to 1918.  Women working in metals particularly showed a very high increase, as 170 000 women were working in that area of work in 1914 and the number had risen to 594 000 by 1918.  195 000 women had replaced the men’s jobs.  All these areas of work had shown an increase greater than the number of women that took over the men’s jobs.  Therefore it showed that more job opportunities were becoming available for women and it encouraged women to go out to work, which changed their traditional role of just looking after the home and family.

Women were soon replacing office jobs left by the men.  By the end of the war half a million women had replaced men in office jobs.  Before the war it was very rare for women to be employed by the Government and in 1914 only 2 000 women were.  However by 1918, 225 000 women were employed in Government jobs and 197 000 women had replaced the men’s jobs.  It allowed women to show that they could manage more professional jobs just as well as men and showed they were just as intelligent.

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Factory jobs that the men had left were also becoming popular for women.  Employers were reluctant to take on women at first because they thought that women would not have the necessary skills and feared trouble from the unions.  The country however, became desperate for women workers, especially in munitions and supplies and the Government encouraged private industries to employ women by employing women almost exclusively in their own munitions factories.  As British troops were facing a severe shortage in shells and bullets, Mrs Pankhurst organised a ‘women’s march for jobs’ to recruit women to work in factories.  This ...

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