2. Why did the percentage of jobs done by women increase in the period July 1914 – July 1918?
The most important reason why the percentage of jobs done by women increased in the period July 1914 – July 1918 is the fact that because there was a war on, vast numbers of men went off to fight. This obviously meant there was a labour shortage in Britain due to the fact that men had done most of the jobs before the war and the women had been expected to stay at home cooking, cleaning and looking after children or were employed in domestic service. It was necessary, therefore, once the men had left to fight, for the women to fill the vacancies and take over what were previously men’s jobs. By July 1918, 7 310 500 women were in paid employment.
An example of this is in commerce and finance where the percentage of women to men in employment increased from 27% to 53%. This large increase will have been caused by the fact that the middle class men who did these jobs went to fight, so the middle class women had to take over jobs such as banking from husbands and brothers etc.
Not only the middle class men went to France to fight however, large numbers of working class men also joined them. This resulted in a labour shortage in the jobs that working class men did and the need for women to fill vacancies in industry for example, which accounts partly for the increased percentage of women in employment there. However, this was not the only reason for the increase of women in employment in industry form 26% to 35%. Another reason for this was due to the fact that there was a war on and that the country needed more ammunition, guns and shells in order to be able to fight in the war as the army grew in size. Therefore the number of munitions factories increased resulting in the number of jobs available increasing and so leading to an increase in the number of women working in them – the munitions industry employed 947 000 women representing 90% of its workforce. This can also be seen as a reason for the increase of women working in transport and mining industries as the government would need to transport the goods to the war and also power the factories with coal from the mines.
Similarly as a result of the war the number of women working in agriculture increased. This was due to the naval blockade by Germany whereby they attempted to sink all merchant ships sailing in and out of Britain meaning that Britain could not get the food supplies they needed from overseas. This resulted in Britain needing women to work on the land and produce food for the country. The percentage increase was only by 5%, however, as not many women would have wanted to do this strenuous and dirty work. So although there was an increase due to the war, it was not as large or significant as that in industry as only 48 000 women volunteered to fill the 260 000 jobs available.
A reason for the large percentage increase of women doing jobs in this period was due to the fact that many women helped the war effort in specific roles. For example 23 000 women worked as nurses during the war as well as 15 000 women working as assistants. This increase is evidently caused directly because of the war because a lot more men were injured and sick resulting in the need for a lot more nurses. In addition, if it was women who took on these nursing roles, men could be released from these duties and be able to fight so it was encouraged by the government and many posters of the time also attempt to get women to join the various organisations. Therefore, because women wanted to help in the war effort, they were able to join organisations such as the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) and become nurses resulting in the large percentage increase of women doing jobs. As well as nursing, women were able to join organisations such as the WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps) and take on non-combatant jobs such as telephonists, clerks, cooks and mechanics – there were 40 000 women who joined this organisation. Therefore, because these new roles were opened up to women it resulted in over 100 000 women serving in the various sections: the WAAC, the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) and the WRAF (Women’s Royal Air Force). The reason this resulted in such a large increase of women working is because these were jobs which upper and middle class women were able to do as well, jobs in the munitions factories for example were only done by working class women who were used to working before the war. The upper and middle class women had been used to a life of leisure before the war, but the number of these women working still increased during the war due to these organisations and the types of jobs they provided.
Another reason why the numbers of women in paid employment increased during this period was due the government encouraging women to work outside the home by introducing measures that made it easier. For example the number of child welfare centres was increased during the war from 350 to 578 meaning that women were freed from their home duties and were able to work. Women’s pay more than doubled during the war meaning women could earn a higher wage and so making more women want to work because the extra money could give their families a higher standard of health and give women more independence in society as they would be earning their own money. Obviously, because the men, who were the previous sources of income for families, were away fighting, many women had to work in order to get enough money to feed their families. In addition to this, all these new skilled jobs were being opened up for women giving them a chance to break away form the jobs in domestic service and actually give them some career prospects. A reason for this large increase of women doing jobs could be simply because women were bored of their passive roles in life and wanted more interesting and adventurous things to do, however, they were only given opportunities to do this as a result of the war directly, i.e. roles helping the war effort, and also the fact that so many men were away fighting leaving jobs in Britain for the women to do. Therefore it can be seen that these are the main reasons for the increased percentage of women doing jobs during this period because otherwise the women would never have had the opportunity to do them.
3. “The First World War changed the role of women enormously.” Do you agree with this view?
Before the First World War, women living in Britain had minimal voting rights, the majority did not work and all were considered inferior second class citizens to men. World War One had a large impact on the role of women in British society. Not only were there new political and economical opportunities opened up to women but the social aspect of women’s life was changed dramatically as well. However, although many of these changes, which took place during the war for a number of different reasons, had a lasting impact, some of them did not break through sufficiently and simply reverted back to the status they had previously before the war. For this reason it is debatable whether or not these changes amounted to an enormous alteration of women’s role in British society.
One area where there was a large change in the role of women was in the political changes which took place as a result of the war. Before the war women had very few voting rights as they were not allowed to vote in a general election and only householders or the wives of householders could vote in local elections, these women also had to be over thirty and pay a local council tax. Women were also not allowed to stand as members of parliament. There was some pressure from groups such as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by Millicent Fawcett, and the Women’s Social and Political union (WSPU) who campaigned for equal voting rights for men and women. However, their efforts were not successful and the Liberal Government would not grant this. It was very difficult for women to change their political position due to the fact that Parliament was made up totally of men who were elected by the men of Britain and who therefore would only pass laws to suit the interests of men and put many suffragettes in jail for violent protests. Public opinion was also against them as most thought women incapable of voting sensibly. When war broke out in 1914, however, the suffragettes stopped their campaign in order to help the war effort. Both the NUWSS and the WSPU devoted their time to work in aid of the men at war and the country. By 1916 more than one million women were doing war work, changing public opinion as many now respected these hardworking women and no longer saw the violent aspect of their previous campaigns. Due to the war, a problem with the voting system arose for the government. The method of using lists of voters was no longer appropriate or possible as millions of men were away fighting and for this reason had not lived at the same address for one year and were therefore not on the list. One in five would not be on the list and therefore in 1916 the government had to make plans for a new list to be made. The suffragettes took this opportunity to demand that women should be included. Due to the way in which women had proved themselves doing jobs during the war, many people were now in favour of voting rights for women. Thus in 1918 Parliament changed the voting laws, giving the vote to all men over 21 and to women over 30 who were householders or wives of householders, in the Representation of the People Act. Also after the war in 1918 women gained the right to stand as an MP in parliament. This change also had a lasting impact as ten years after the war ended, in 1928 an act that reduced the voting age for women to 21 and abolished the law that these women must be householders or married to them, was introduced. Therefore the war can be seen to have had an enormous effect on women’s role in political society as for the first time women had the same political rights as men. There are historians, however, who view the gaining of the vote for women as being caused by changes taking place before the war. For example Roger Fulford argues that extended campaigns by suffragettes for the vote before the war were the reason for the change. The leader of the WSPU, E. Sylvia Pankhurst took the view that although women’s part in the war was a factor contributing to them gaining the vote, militancy in her opinion was by far the stronger argument. However, due to the violent nature of these protests, the public were not sympathetic to them and they were not successful due to the male dominance in society so they were a start but did not in fact directly cause the change. Therefore it seems much more likely that the change was triggered as a result of the respect the women earned doing war work as argued by C. Graves. Men could no longer suppress the newly confident women who had proved themselves to be just as capable as men both in work skills and mental ability in order to be able to vote sensibly and make decisions themselves. Not only was this change in women’s political rights an enormous break through in women’s role in society, it is also one of the most important changes that took place as it gave women a say in running the country and therefore the opportunity to influence changes in other aspects of women’s life such as work opportunities and social hardships that women might of experienced.
Another aspect of life in which significant changes took place during the war for women was in women’s economical role. Before the war middle and upper class women were not expected or encouraged to work and therefore the majority did not. Some middle class women, however, could work as secretaries, teachers or shop assistants. On the other hand, many working class women had to work in order to earn money to survive. The most common occupation as indicated by a census form 1911 was as domestic servants, cooking and cleaning, but some worked in factories and textile mills. However, the majority of women did not work the reason being that for most people including women, it was felt that a woman’s role in life was to support her husband in the home, maintaining the house and looking after the children, therefore most women were expected to give up work once married. In addition to this, even if a woman did work, the job would not be very good and would not have any career prospects the reason being that women were thought of as less intelligent than men and therefore could not get any jobs requiring leadership, skill or physical strength. Also, even if a woman did do the same job as a man, they would be likely to be paid almost half as much as men for the same work. The war changed this dramatically as women took over jobs that men left behind when they went to fight. Therefore, for the first time women were given the opportunity to do well paid and more challenging work that had previously been thought of as work which only men could do ranging from bus conductors, window cleaners, coal carriers and mechanics to clerks and bankers. There were chances to work in industry where the number of women increased form 26% to 35% , for example in the increased number of munitions factories in which women represented 90% of the workforce, in transport where the percentage of women to men in employment went from 2% to 12% , for example trams and railways and in agriculture where women working went from 9% to 14% due to the need to produce more food at home because of the naval blockade by Germany that the war had brought. There was also a whole range of opportunities for challenging work in organisations which enabled women to help the war effort in non-combatant roles such as the VAD where women could work as nurses and the WAAC which offered a very wide range of jobs from administration and control for the upper class women to jobs such as cooks, telephonists, clerks and drivers for the middle and lower class women. Over 100 000 women served in all the various sections of the women’s army as entirely new roles were opened up. Thus not only were the middle and upper class women given the chance during the war to work, but also the lower class women were given the opportunity to do more reliable, well paid and challenging work than the menial domestic jobs they had to put up with before. These opportunities evidently increased when military conscription was introduced in 1916 forcing more men to fight leaving more jobs for the women. Thus being able to do these jobs, women were able to prove themselves just as capable and in some cases better than men who did the same work previously. However, although work for women was changed enormously during the war, after the war ended women were expected to give up their jobs to the returning service men. Many women were forced to hand in their notice and within months hundreds of thousands of women were out of work. The war had changed women’s attitude, however, as many women refused to go back to domestic service wanting better careers because they had know shown that they could do more skilful and challenging work thus regarding it as poorly paid degrading work, and therefore stayed on the dole. However, the government then cut unemployment pay forcing most women back to the jobs that they did before the war. Also, the munitions factories were no longer needed to produce weapons when the war ended resulting in mass job loss for those women as well, the percentage of women working in industry falling back to 27% only one percent more than what it was before the war. This drop in percentage of women working was common in all areas of employment. In fact, census evidence shows that whereas 31% of women worked in 1911, only 31% of women worked in 1921 suggesting that the war actually had a negative impact on the role of women. However, it can be seen that the change although not noticeable at first, did have a lasting impact from the way that when World War Two broke out, the women went back to the factories straight away because this idea of women working had been introduced in World War One. The girls who went to work in 1940 would have had mothers who worked in 1914. Also, not all women were forced to give up their jobs, most women working in shops and offices kept their jobs proving that some change had taken place. Before the war women could not get jobs in the civil service, legal profession, architecture or medicine and although these were still closed to women during the war, women proved their mental capability during this time and thus this changed significantly in 1919 when the Sex Disqualification Removal Act was passed which allowed middle class women to become civil servants, lawyers, doctors and nursing was recognised as a profession. The number of women qualifying as doctors in 1921 was 602, a significantly larger figure than for the men which was only 325. However, these types of jobs were obviously not an option for working class women. For this reason it can be seen that the war did cause a large change but that women’s role as housewives was still prominent as women could still not continue working once married, although it had been questioned slightly due to the fact that women had proved themselves capable in men’s jobs and new opportunities in life were being opened up to women but only in addition to their roles as housewives and mothers. These were largely for upper and middle class women, however, as most working class women were forced back into domestic service, a menial job not requiring much skill or intelligence. Also, for the women who found themselves out of work, the role of housewife and mother became even more important than it was before the war.
Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS, however, felt that war had “revolutionised the industrial position of women” and “opened their eyes to the national waste in condemning women to forms of work needing very little intelligence“. She was likely to be biased, however, because she would want the part women played to be recognised in the form of equal rights for women. However, although there is evidence to suggest that changes in work for women during the war reverted back to the original situation once the war had ended, she was right in that men’s conception of the sort of work ordinary women could do was changed. This was also an important change as it would enable changes in the role of women in society to be made later on.
Other economical changes which took place during the war was in the wages that women received. Before the war women received a lot less than men even if they did the same work, in some cases it could be about half as much. During the war, however, with better jobs available such as in munitions factories rather than domestic service and more women working, the pay for women more than doubled. Average wages went form eleven shillings to 25 shillings in 1919. However, although this appears to be an enormous change, the wages were still lower than men’s and remained like this after the war. Another reason for this change not being significant is the fact that many women obviously went back to the wages they earned before the war when they were forced back into their old jobs. In addition, many women found themselves out of work and therefore earning no wage at all. Therefore, although the war did cause a large increase in women’s wages, it did not have a lasting impact and was therefore not an enormous alteration.
The changes during the war in women’s economical situation, although some did not have lasting effect, did, however, change social aspects of women’s lives. This is due to the fact that earning their own money gave women some independence and freedom to decide how they wanted to dress and behave. Before the war, women were regarded as inferior to men and remained under the control of men all their lives, passing from being dependant on their fathers to being dependant on their husbands. Therefore, men expected them to behave in certain ways, for example in contrast to men, women could not spit, swear, smoke or drink alcohol in public and very rarely left the home except to shop or visit people. They had very little freedom to do what they wanted and young girls could not go out without an older adult, usually an older female relative accompanying them. They were also governed in the way they dressed, ankle length skirts or dresses were always worn so that their legs could not be seen and their hair was mostly worn long. However, because women worked during the war they had more importance and also as they were earning their own money they had more independence and could decide for themselves what they wanted to do and how they wanted to dress. In addition to this in some of the types of work women did it was essential that they cut their hair and wore trousers in order to avoid accidents with machinery. Therefore the economical changes which took place also influenced the social aspect of life for women as they gained confidence, and although still inferior to men, a large change had taken place in women’s attitudes – they no longer accepted their passive roles in life and wanted better careers and the freedom to choose how they acted. This resulted in some middle class women, who became known as “flappers” during the 1920’s due to their deliberate defiance of the social rules for women in society, wearing their hair and skirts short, their dresses looser (corsets went out of fashion), smoking and drinking in public, wearing make-up and going out without chaperons. Therefore, it can be seen that both women’s attitude towards themselves and the public’s attitude towards women underwent quite a large change due to the increased independence and confidence they gained from the work opportunities and economical changes that took place during the war.
An aspect of life in which it is debatable whether or not it altered positively or negatively as a result of the war is women’s health. Before the war women were seen as fragile and weak and it was thought they should be protected from the harshness of life, especially for middle and upper class women. It is for this reason that housekeeping and domestic service was viewed as the most suitable occupation for working class women and also the reason that most upper and middle class women were not expected to work. They obviously did not leave the house much and therefore did not get much exercise, so they evidently did not get the chance to improve their health and strength. However, during the war as many women took on men’s jobs previously thought to strenuous for them, such as mining, working the land or being railway porters, their health gradually improved as they became more active and went outdoors more. The extra money for working class women also enabled them to have a better diet. This can be proved by a government report which stated that women’s health had improved with more challenging, strenuous and physically hard jobs and that before the war, women‘s capacity had been judged unfairly due to the conditions such as poor diet and lack of exercise in the open air. However, this was not the case for all women. In some cases, the conditions in the factories actually caused a deterioration in their health. As well as the fact that hours were long and shift work was difficult for working class women with children, for munitions workers, conditions were actually very dangerous as they worked with TNT and chemicals which made their hair and skin turn yellow giving them the nickname “canaries”. Accidents were also a common occurrence. Thus it can be seen that although for upper and middle class women, who had not worked before, these jobs gave them a more active life improving their strength and health, this did not extend to all the classes as the work which some working class women was in fact harmful to them. Therefore, although changes in health were large, they were not widespread and therefore did not have that large and impact on women.
In conclusion, it can be seen that the largest and most important change took place in politics with the gaining of the right to vote and stand as MPs for women. This resulted in women having a say in the running of the country for the first time making them more important and more able to make the changes they wanted. This meant that although many of the large economical changes such as new work opportunities and better wages that took place during the war reverted back to the situation they were in before the war once it had ended, the women now had the power to influence these things for themselves later on. In addition, although some of the economical changes did not break through sufficiently to last after the war had ended, some of the prejudice against women had been broken down which did have a lasting effect because the freedom and confidence women earned by working during the war made it possible for them to stand up for themselves and make social changes in their lives which would have such a massive impact that made it impossible for women, although men were still superior, to go back to their previous status of being controlled totally by men. On the whole therefore, although not all the changes which took place enormously altered the role of women in society, the First World War did change women’s lives significantly and set the ball in motion in order for changes to be made in the future.
