Describe the employment opportunities of women in Britain in 1914 at the outbreak of war.

Authors Avatar

                                                                                                                                                                                                     Abdullah Mamaniat 10Q

Assignment One: Objective One: - The Home Front

Question 1

      Describe the employment opportunities of women in Britain in 1914 at the outbreak of war.

One of the biggest changes brought about by the First World War was the great increase in the number of women who went to work. At the outbreak of war in 1914, out of a total female population of 23.7 million, nearly 5.9 million were working. The total number of women working went up by more than a million between 1914 and 1918, as women took over a wide variety of different jobs in order to release men for service in the forces.

In 1914, most women, if they did work, had jobs in domestic service. In fact 1.5 million women and girls were employed in this trade. Domestic service was the employment of hired workers by private households for the performance of tasks such as housecleaning, cooking, child care, gardening and personal service. It also included the performance of similar tasks for hire in public institutions and businesses, including hotels and boarding houses. This meant that many women worked for well off big houses as parlour maids, scullery maids, laundry maids, kitchen maids and cooks. However, not all women were fortunate enough to be able to work in these big houses and hotels. Some domestic servants worked in exceedingly dreadful conditions. Working long hours as chambermaids, cleaners or cooks, they were made to live in the attics of houses where it was awfully cold and windy. These women were made to work immensely hard and were merely given low wages. Sometimes they only got £5 or £10 per year. Additionally they were given very few days off. They often only got half day a week, or even a month, off.

One of the reasons why the number of women in the domestic service was high was that the school leaving age was twelve. Therefore as a high level of education was not required, and many just went straight into the service.  

About 900,000 women worked in the textile industry in mills and factories. Again working hours were long and the pay was poor. Since the Industrial Revolution, the textiles industry was “women’s” industry. Many women were employed by the textiles industry because, although it was hard to say, women were better at supervising the spinning and weaving machines effectively then men. Even though men filled the posts of overseers, women were paid much lower than men.

        A further 500,000 women were employed in the “sweated trades”. This was a business in which clothing and dressmaking took place. Women were made to work for long hours in workshops in the houses of their employers under unhealthy and oppressive conditions at low wages.

        

        For the owners of sweatshops, women were seen as an easy target. They could be bullied in to doing more work and if they complained then simple- they would lose their jobs. Unfortunately for women, even trade unions couldn’t be set up to protect them because there were only a very small number of workers in each workshop.

By and large we can see that it wasn’t difficult for women to find work, but they usually had to put up with the most unpleasant conditions and the lowest pay. For many of these women who worked, there were many few rights and many collected pay which was only two thirds that of male counterparts. They were also rarely promoted. This was simply because many people believed that women were a lot less capable and skilled than men. They were also thought to be a lot less clever than men as women were often not as well educated as men. This was true in that after leaving school at twelve, parents saw no hope in educating their daughters further as it was understood that women would get married and have children. They would have no time to put what they had learnt into action.

Join now!

In 1914 only 2% of girls received a formal education. Many of the 5.9 million that worked in either the domestic service, textile industry or sweated trades were normally from poorer classes. These were the women that left school at twelve and straight away started working to earn a little money. A very small number of educated women worked. Educated women worked in the civil service and telecommunications industry.

By 1914 there were women working in nearly all the professions albeit a very small number of doctors and legal workers. Even though women were able to become doctors since the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay