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Introduction

Without the work of women on the Home Front, Britain could not have won the First World War. Do you agree? 5) I agree with the view that without the work of women on the Home Front, Britain could not have won the First World War. This is because although the men were out fighting the battles on the western front they would not have been able to fire munitions and defend themselves in those battles if the women had not been working in munitions factories. The lack of women in the factories would cause a shortage in the number of munitions our country had at our disposal then the plans for The Somme would have never been produced, as we wouldn't have 3 million shells to put into one attack. Back in England the women kept the society together by doing anything a man did before he left for the war. Sources A-E, G, H and J are about working in a munitions factory, though B, D and G are about the negative points of working in a munitions factory. Source A is a letter written by a woman in 1976 that lived through the First World War. 'We worked twelve hours a day,' If women are working in factories for twelve hours a day then we can understand that a lot of work was being accomplished in that time. ...read more.

Middle

Source E is useful is showing us that if the government were making posters and an advertising campaign to try and get women to work in the factories. It shows that it is an important issue as the government feel that they need to help persuade the minds of women as the number of women taking up the work by free will won't be enough. The poster is saying that the women are critical in the war effort. Source F is a table that shows the numbers of employed women between 1914 and 1918, in transport, manufacturing, Domestic service, as Civil Servants and teaching, all the employment numbers on Source F went up apart from the domestic services which went down. This shows that the Women took over on any job that the men had to leave behind to fight at the Western Front. Nearer the end of the war, there were fewer women in the Domestic services abandoning the 'housemaid' occupation and started filling in the spaces where the women were needed like the munitions factories, coalmines and gasworks. Source G, which is a is part of an account of a woman's experiences while working in WWI written in 1919, shows us the shocking treatment of a female working during the First World War by men. 'My drawer was nailed up by the men, and oil was poured over everything in it through a crack another night.' ...read more.

Conclusion

In conclusion, without the women as a whole in WW1 we wouldn't have won the war. When the women were needed, at the height of the suffragettes protest for women's rights, they stood up and did the job, even though they were still getting put down by the men thinking that they were too weak and couldn't do the work. The women during WW1 showed everyone that they could do the same job as the men. For example, during the war the women started varnishing plane wings, making shell fused and driving busses. At the end, women were working in all sorts of jobs. Many involving heavy work which people would have thought women incapable of before the War. The women learned new skills quickly and often ended up doing the work better than the men they had replaced. In 1918, the British Army broke through the Hindenburg Line and won the war. They wouldn't have been able to do this without the rifles, machine guns and artillery shells produced by the women. The women, in the end, did get the vote but only for women aged 30 and over as if they were allowed to vote, like the men, at 21, they would have outnumbered the male voters. Even if the Americans had helped us instead of the women, we still would have lost as the women that saved Britain had the will power to finish the job. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Britain 1905-1951 section.