role of women 1914-1928

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Naumaan Amjed

How far did the role and status of women change between 1914 and 1928?

In the following paragraphs we will be seeing how the status of women changed between 1914 and 1928, We will be seeing three main parts and they are war work, dress and social attitudes and politics. We will be seeing how these changed between the years 1914 and 1928 and what impact they had on women. I will also analyse and carefully show what women did in each case before war, during war and after war.

The work and lifestyle before the war for women’s was just of a typical house wife. Women’s work before the war was to run the house like a housewife and nothing else as it was expected that men were the only ones to be working. The work that women’s were allowed to do outside the home was to work mainly in domestic services such as servants at other peoples homes, or they worked in textiles factories making clothes about 29% of  women worked at that times in places like domestic services and sweat industries(textiles). Women also never got paid as much as a man would be because of who she was (a women), they also never got paid as much because if she gets paid same as a man then there is no difference between them, but the parliament considered great differences between the way a man lived and a woman. The top jobs were being a nurse or teaching this was only if the woman had high qualifications which was very hard to get because the women’s schools and colleges didn’t teach as much because they never thought the important subjects were that compulsory. I shall also describe in great detail to what lives women lived before the war was kicked off:

The working class women were the most poorly treated.  Often they would be made to go to work along with their husband to earn enough money for the large family to survive.  They would have to be strong women so they could carry out the work in the factories and mines, the work at home and also to be able to give birth to many children as their survival rate was so appallingly low.  At home their duties were to look after the many children and to clean the house.  There were no labour saving devices or servants to help so the chores all had to be done by hand making them very tedious.  They didn’t have many prospects to look forward to either, they weren’t educated as many were brought up in a large, poor family who could not afford to educate their children. Even if there was enough money, the males would have been educated and not the females.  This meant she couldn’t leave her job and find a higher paid career.  This money would have been needed for the family, as her husband would have only earned, on average, £75 per year much of which was often spent on alcohol.  The living and working conditions were so poor; the life expectancy of a working class woman was only 22(on average).  This was less than half as long as the middle class lady.

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The middle class lady was worlds apart from this hard life.  She would wake up mid-morning, have her maid dress and wash her, cook her food leaving her to have time to perhaps, visit friends or do some needlework.  Middle class gentleman would look for beauty in a wife and not much else, it would be a bonus if she had money, as for him she was nothing more than a fashion item.  They would have servants to do all their housework and a governess would look after the female children.  The male children would go to school so ...

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