Job opportunities for women were low because they were expected to look after the children. Today people have nannies to look after the children. Before the war only wealthy people had their children looked after and some middle-class women had at least 5 or 6 children to look after. Women who worked before they got married were expected to give up their jobs and look after their husbands.
Most of the jobs done by women were manual and they didn’t need to use their brains. Women couldn’t become lawyers, accountants, managers, bankers, and members of parliament, engineers or scientists. It was thought that too much thinking could permanently damage their brains and physical work would injure them forever. A
Lucy Wood
Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School for Girls
GCSE History Coursework
Assessment Objective Number 1
Describe and explain the women’s employment situation in Britain in the years before the war.
woman couldn’t be in charge of another women, her place was in the home, cooking and cleaning. A husband whose wife went out to work would feel ashamed because it meant he was not respected. Woman in different classes had varied employment opportunities.
The difference between working, middle and upper class was very clear-cut because upper-class women were not expected to work.
Lucy Wood
Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School for Girls
GCSE History Coursework
Assessment Objective Number 2
Why did the number of women employed in Britain begin to rise significantly from mid-1915?
The war accounted for many more jobs for women.
Mounting casualties on the western front changed women’s employment situation. When the men went to war those left behind filled their jobs in the munitions factories. When men died on the front line more men were sent to fight leaving vacancies in the workplace. Conscription made the labour shortages worse because in January 1916 every single man aged 18 to 41 was told to ‘sign up’ and fight for their country. Then in April of the same year the act was extended to include married men as well. The positions left open were given to women to whom many people objected. The shortage of artillery shells also affected the labour shortages. There were very few men working in munitions factories making shells. The general at the front line told the government they needed more shells to win the war. The government had to allow women to work in the factories to give them a chance of victory.
People didn’t think that women could work in the factories because they were too delicate and would be harmed. The Right to Serve March in 1915 was a protest by women who marched through London to prove that they were strong. Women could help the war effort by working in the factories, as they weren’t allowed to fight. After this women were allowed to working the munitions factories. This showed that women were prepared to work, could work and they weren’t extremely fragile and unintelligent.
The Women’s Land Army was formed in 1917 because Britain needed to grow as much food as possible. The German U-boats had successfully sunk many British merchant ships bringing food into Britain. Because Britain is an island the only way in was by ship. Wages in the Land Army were very low. Farmers liked to employ school children because they could pay even less wages. In 1914 there were 100,000 women working in fields and introducing the women’s Land Army was expected to bring in dramatically more but there was only an increase of 13,000.
Working Women were still expected to look and act in a lady-like fashion. This tells us that attitudes towards women had not changed. They still had to be gentle, prim and proper. When they started to wear trousers, this was a real shock because the boundary between men and women was blurring. This bothered a lot of people because they thought men wouldn’t be able to discipline their women. Women had a good wage so they could buy their own clothes and gain more independence. Society thought this was a bad thing and thought all women were buying cheap jewellery and flirting with other men while their husbands were fighting. The picture drawn of a woman working in a munitions factory was tarty, cheap, unrespectable and untrusting. The numbers of illegitimate babies grew proving the public right. Men did not approve of women
Lucy Wood
Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School for Girls
GCSE History Coursework
Assessment Objective Number 2
Why did the number of women employed in Britain begin to rise significantly from mid-1915?
working so they would try and get the woman to make mistakes and damage their work on purpose.
The overall picture is that women were not appreciated but the war proved that women were tougher than everyone thought, “The great war has proved to men that women can share men’s dangers, privations and hardships and yet remain women.”
Lucy Wood
Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School for Girls
GCSE History Coursework
Assessment Objective Number 3
In what ways did the First World War change the employment opportunities of women in Britain?
For women the First World War changed many things including their employment opportunities.
Women were wanted in the factories as munitions workers. Before the war shells weren’t needed but when war began women were required to make them. The labour and shell shortages meant women of any calibre were permitted to work even unskilled workers. They worked in factories as ‘khaki girls’ who operated complicated machinery and worked with explosives making shells for the artillery guns on the front line.
The WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps) was set up because all the men fighting in the ‘Great War’ needed food, tanks, guns and machinery fixing, and the accounts to add up. This is another reason why women were needed during the war and not before. For clerical workers the ratios were 4 women to 3 men. Most women were expected to cook and once the war started some found they cooking for over 700 soldiers.
Women were needed as nurses so the first VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) unit was set up in 1914. They worked in converted workhouses, hospitals and tents/huts much nearer the front line for immediate treatment. In the years running up to the war only a small number of people became sick, injured or hurt but during the war men are being severely wounded and need instant treatment that will save their lives. Women are wanted to work in the first aid to treat these men and make sure they have as much of a full recovery as possible.
During the war, in 1916, women were paid to be policewomen for the first time; it had previously only been voluntary work. In 1912 they weren’t needed to patrol streets for prostitutes or help people into air raid shelters. When the war had begun the police force had to grow. There was a decrease in moral standards due to the independence that women had gained from working.
After the war it was acceptable for a woman to take a job that a man might want. In 1919 the Sex Disqualification Act (removal) was passed so that women could become barristers, vets, police officers and high civil servants. If a woman had lost their job they were given £1.25 a week until they were employed once more (a ‘jobseeker’s allowance’). Some women went back to domestic service because they weren’t educated enough to continue their jobs but sin 1920 universities agreed to giving women degrees. Census’ show that after the war there were 7 times as many women employed in some fields of work such as architecture, soliciting, medicine and engineering. Not only were working class women moving into higher jobs. In 1918 the first woman took a seat as an MP in parliament (Lady Astor) and the first female Cabinet Minister was appointed
Lucy Wood
Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School for Girls
GCSE History Coursework
Assessment Objective Number 3
In what ways did the First World War change the employment opportunities of women in Britain?
(Margaret Bondfield). With these women in parliament The Representation of the People’s Act meant women over 30 were entitled to the vote which was than reinstated in 1928 when women over 21 could vote. The war proved that women weren’t as weak and feeble as society thought and this meant that after the war they could still do a variety of jobs.
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