- What was the scale of female wartime employment in the munitions industry?
The number of women involved in the munitions industry increased from 200,000 in 1914 to 900,000 in 1918.
- What other jobs did women do on the home front?
Women filled all sort of jobs –many of the dangerous. They worked in the shipyards and drove trams, buses and ambulances. 48,000 worked as labourers on the land in the Women’s Land Army. These jobs proved women had the stamina and the skill to cope with tasks which people had thought only men could do. Farm work, though, was not a job women flocked to do. 210,000 vacancies remained unfilled.
- What difficulties did women face in their work?
Women filled all sorts of jobs, which brought about many difficulties. Munitions work involved the manufacture of shells, weapons, and the handling of chemicals. It was dangerous and unhealthy work. Working on farms was a hard, physical and dirty job.
- Is it fair that women munition workers receive so much attention compared to other women home front workers?
Munitionettes produced 80% of the weapons and shells used by the British Army and daily risked their lives working with poisonous substances without adequate protective clothing or the required safety measures. Although this can be seen as a gauge of their will to sacrifice everything for Britain it should be read, rather, as part of their treatment as cheap, easily replaceable labour.
Women in the military
- What role did women play in nursing?
Women were quickly recruited into traditional nursing jobs once the war had broken out. 23,000 women served as qualified nurses, some of them on the Western Front, and they had to be at least 23-years old before they would be allowed abroad. A further 80,000 volunteered to serve as nursing assistants in the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) during the course of the war and about 8000 of these served abroad. Women in the VADs had only basic first aid training and were not paid, so they tended to come from wealthy families.
- What does the story of Edith Cavell reveal about the dangers women faced on the front?
Edith Cavell is an extreme example of how dangerous the role of nursing could be. Their closeness to the front meant that they were exposed to physical danger from enemy action.
- What role did women play in the armed forces?
From the spring of 1917 there were many jobs in the armed services which women were able to do. Women served in various sections of the armed services: the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF). Here they took over the clerical and administrative jobs normally done by men. This allowed more men to go to the front.
- What difficulties did they face?
At first the government resisted demands to allow women some role in the armed services as well as in nursing and industry. Also, women in the WAAC were thought to be of a lower class then women in the other women’s forces. They quickly gained a “bad” reputation for sexual misconduct with the troops in France.
- What was the scale of female employment in the armed forces?
100,000 women served in the various sections of the armed services.
- Why was the Women’s Land Army so important?
The number of farm workers fell by 260,000 during the war as the men were conscripted or volunteered for the war. The government set up the Women’s Land Army (WLA) in an attempt to persuade women to take their places. Maintaining food production was vital, especially because of the effects of the German U-Boat campaign, and rationing had to be introduced mid-way through 1918.
- Why was it unpopular with women?
The response of women to the WLA was not enthusiastic. Working on farms was a hard, physical and dirty job and, therefore, was considered unfeminine.
- How many vacancies were left unfilled in the Women’s Land Army?
210,000 vacancies were left unfilled
Women at home
- What was the aim and impact of the German U-Boat campaign?
In April 1917 German U-Boats sank over 370 ships belonging to Britain and other countries. One in every four merchant ships leaving a British port was being sunk. Losses on this scale would indeed bring Britain to the point of starvation.
- What difficulties did women face in running their homes?
In 1917 the government began to respond to the urgent problem of food shortages caused by the devastating German U-Boat campaign attacks on merchant ships. The price of a loaf of bread had more than doubled since 1914. By mid-1918 meat, butter, sugar and margarine were all rationed. Fine for breaches of the regulations were ferocious. One woman was fined £20 for feeding steak to her dog. This fine, though, seemed lenient compared to that of £50 on a man who fed bread crusts to his pigs. Getting hold of an illegal extra ration book could lead to three months imprisonment.
- How did women ensure home life continued to function smoothly?
To begin with, the government encouraged voluntary measures such as growing more food in private gardens or going without meat for one day a week.
- Why did many women welcome rationing?
Rationing was government control over people’s lives on a vast scale – or at least, so it seemed. In fact, the rations laid down were generous and caused little hardship. But the queues disappeared and rationing was popular because people thought it was fairer.
- How did women place men under pressure to sign up to fight?
The White Feather Campaign began with the creation of the white feather as a symbol of cowardice and unfulfilled civic duty. With the war effort and the recruitment campaign in full swing, the women of the White Feather would present any healthy young Englishman in civilian dress with this token, in order to symbolize their scorn for him and his failure to be man. Upon receipt of a white feather, these men were being told that they weren’t “real men” and that the women around them looked upon this apparent lack of masculinity with disgust. The campaign was meant to make these men question their gender identity and hopefully drive them to enlist in the military so that they could correct this perceived imbalance.