Why Had the Social, Economic and Political Position of Women in Britain Changed between 1900 and 1929 and what were the consequences of These Changes on Women’s Lives
Between 1900 and 1929 there were many changes to the rights and laws regarding women. For a long time women were treated as the property of their fathers and husbands because men were seen as the superior race, but women didn’t like this and some started to demand change. There were many social and economical changes for women during this time. There were changes at the factories where women worked because the conditions were atrocious. Also women became able to get jobs that were usually only available to men. They gained the right to vote as well as some new marriage laws giving them more rights when they got married, instead of being completely the property of their husbands. All these things changed in this short period, but why was this? And what were the consequences of these changes?
It was believed, in the early nineteen hundreds, that the role of a woman was to just comfort her husband and look after the family. She had no other responsibilities. When a woman got married all of her possessions, and she herself, became the property of her husband. He was even allowed to hit her. The “Angel in the House” was seen as a weak creature. She was tender and delicate, and so painted thin with pail skin and a weak figure. She was also seen to be weak minded, not strong enough to think about important things, only interested in trivial matters. The only education she required was to make her a better wife. Source A says that the most important things that a woman has done are “learnt several tunes from heart” and “paid visits” this shows that women never had anything important to do, they had no real responsibilities other than taking care of the family, and in my opinion they lived the life of a child.
Most middle class women didn’t need to go to work because their husbands could afford everything, but working class women often didn’t have enough money so the women had to go out and work to support their family and help keep them free from poverty. In the nineteenth century most work for women was in the factories. Their work was unskilled, repetitive and paid less than men’s work. This sort of factory work was very tough and tiring for the women to endure, from source E the woman says “in the same position, the same task, every hour, every week, every year.” If it wasn’t bad enough working in those cold dirty conditions, the women didn’t even get any support with their babies when the got pregnant they had to cope with the stress of the exhausting factory work as well as look after their babies. It really was tough. Apart from factory work there was some other work for women. The biggest employer of women was domestic-service, basically, employment as servants. The other was sweated trades. Five times as many women worked as servants as worked in factories. By 1861 most servants were women and it was regarded largely as women’s work. Domestic work was much harder than factory work but was seen as lady-like. Working in a rich house with lots of other servants gave the women the advantage of being in a community. However the chief servant was often very strict. Many women started at a young age at the bottom of the hierarchy and could be badly bullied by the others. There were made to work long hours at hard and dirty jobs, while senior servants did more skilled jobs.
