Source B shows a different side to factory working. It is an extract from a book written by Sylvia Pankhurst in 1932. She wrote that in 1916 a woman working at a London aircraft works painting aircraft wings with dope varnish approached her. Although this woman worked similar hours to the woman in source A, she earned a lot less and there were health issues. This shows there is a dark side to factory working.
Source C is from a book by an owner of a factory in Birmingham written in 1917. The factory owner writes that “typical cases” show that women liked factory work yet this might not be the whole story, since it is from a factory owner about his own workers, he just might like to look good to everyone else by saying his workers like factory work.
Source D is a photograph taken in a munitions factory during WWI of women working in a munitions factory. On the back it says the phrase “When the boys come back we are not going to keep you any longer – girls”. This phrase was common around Britain as when the war had finished and the soldiers returned, they would kick out the girls and rehire the men. The photograph was likely to be taken by a factory owner because by my own knowledge factory owners were forced to accept women workers so their view is a cynical view on women workers. The factory owner thinks of it as a temporary thing and wants the women to know that as well. In other words the women are being used and exploited for cheaper labour than the men and then discarded when the men come back.
Source E is a poster produced by the British government in 1916 and it encourages women to work as factory workers and build munitions and shows a positive view on factory life. The words in the poster are “These women are doing their bit – Learn to make Munitions”. This is a propaganda message, which shows the positive image of factory life. Propaganda is the government’s way of getting people to do what they want through the media and in this case persuades women to work in factories for King and country. 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.’ This kind of behaviour is sexist, but when compared to the way the government is still treating women and has treated women before the war, with imprisonment for female protestors and force feeding in prison, the kind of actions that these men are displaying can be better understood. The Foreman’s behaviour could be explained if he felt that the women threatened the men’s jobs and Male status.
Source H is part of an article from the “Engineer” published in 1915, which shows women could handle much heavier equipment than previously dreamt of. This shows that Men underestimated women and were stunned by this change.
Source I is part of a report from “Women’s work in Wartime” published in 1918. The source shows us how women had to take over the majority of jobs on the Home Front as there simply weren’t the amount of men left needed to do all of them. The report shows how women were doing most of the work back in Britain and this really tells us how important the work of women on the Home Front was. Britain really would have collapsed, as the country simply wouldn’t have been able to keep running if none of the women were filling in the extra jobs.
In 1916 the country had 2 million workers, which wasn’t enough to keep the country running so women joined up into the factories. Near the end of the war around 800,000 women worked in the factories. Not only did women put up with prejudice ness from the sexist men, they also were successful at doing the men’s work.
Using my own knowledge, I know that in 1917, when the German submarine blockade stopping all food and supplies getting to Britain was at its worse, Britain was seriously short of food. An extra 2.5 million acres of land were ploughed and workers were needed for this work and the harvest. The ‘Women’s Land Army’ was forced to do this work. By 1918 16,000 women had joined. They did a crucial job in keeping Britain fed. Without the help of the women in the ‘Women’s Land Army’ Britain wouldn’t of lasted much longer and would have starved to death, meaning the end of the war for us.
Women also did work off the Home Front. Many women worked as nurses and ambulance drivers on the Western Front and though they never fought they would have been a few yards from the action at times. This service that the women provided would have been extremely valuable.
All these sources about the positive and negative sides of working in factories show that women helped win the war. Because of their efforts the government gave women over 30 the vote as a reward but the women that worked were in their late teens and early twenties so it was unfair, but in the end the women helped win the war and they earned the right to vote.
We might have survived without the women working in place of the men. Later on in the war, the American’s joined the war. There help could have helped us survive in the war supplying us with more food and munitions than they already had.
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.
