As war broke out between European powers and men began to ship out to the battlefront, the need for labor became a real issue for British industry. Though women were ready and eager to serve their country in its time of need, the country initially fought against the idea of a large female workforce. According to a poll taken a year after the outbreak of the war, an estimated 80,000 women were ready to aid in the war effort, however only a mere 8,000 had currently obtained employment. On July 17, 1915, women confronted the issue directly as they marched in London declaring that as far as winning the war was concerned, women were all business. The organizer of the demonstration, Clara Butt, emphasized the power women had to help their country in the war effort, referring to duties from doctoring to factory work. The importance of the rally truly lied within its message as women collectively came together to assert pressure on their government to put them to work. Countless women referred to the momentous event, writing and speaking on its significance to their lives, to their daughter’s lives and to their culture.
By July 1918, nearly 3 million women were employed in British industry. By the end of the war, women munition workers numbered 900,000, while clothing and textile manufacturing had equal numbers as well. They were found in munition factories, farms as part of the Women’s Land Army, nursing injured soldiers by volunteering for Voluntary Aid Detachment, and even working on airplanes in the Women’s Royal Air Force. It was positions such as these that provided the opportunity for women to prove their worth to society. For the first time they received financial freedom and actually gained the opportunity to change jobs, something that would never have been possible in the pre-war era. The "London Gazette" in December 1917 surveyed 444,000 women on their movement in employment. The results showed that 68% of them had changed jobs since the war began in 1914, 23% had moved form one factory job to another factory and 22% were previously unemployed but now had work. This is just a prime example of how history and circumstance lent a hand to the women’s working class, which would affect them in the coming decades.
As women stepped into these positions, they were forced to test the limits of time-honored notions that were originally created to keep the female off the job and at home. These notions were what constituted lower wages for female industrial workers before and throughout the war as women entered in masses into skilled labor. One of these concepts was the apprenticeship myth, stating that a master worker needed to train a minimally paid apprentice for several years before the apprentice could replace him successfully. Women faced the notion head on as they, almost immediately, learned the dynamics of the heavy machinery they were assigned to operate. Mastering jobs in short periods of time, working women exposed the inequities of the system that for centuries justified their lower wages.
Women’s public image in the war would also play a key role in exposing the social changes that were occurring throughout the home front. Writers published in newspapers and magazines the changing roles of women in society and how the clock would not be turned back. A Times journalist wrote as early as 1916 that “the evolution of the working woman will not stop with the war. Her period of ‘making good’ is to be for all time, and parents will have to educate their daughters accordingly”. The support women received in the press not only gave females a moral boost towards the work they performed, but challenged the ideas fixed in the minds of men. Society’s barriers were falling from all sides as the role of women continued to change. Formal recognition in newspapers and magazines dispersed the social effects the war was having on the role of women throughout the country, aiding in their challenge against age-old perceptions.
As the war ended and men returned home, women once again found themselves faced with the prewar conceptions of a women’s place in the home. Though many were displaced, factory workers in particular, many people regret to notice that many women retained their jobs and fought to put into place policies that would protect them. Though the number of female workers from before and after the war may not have changed, it was, as Claire Culleton puts it, “an ideologically different women’s working class”. The culture had already been transformed and women had already realized the power they truly contained after they challenged preconceived notions with success. They understood that as society changed after the war, their place in it would drastically change as well.
Women had successfully defeated the notion that their place belonged in the home with the children. They used the opportunities given to them by history and circumstance and made a uniform statement that they could in fact succeed in the workplace previously only seen fit by men. Throughout the war, millions of female workers, from munition experts to agricultural farmers, faced the male dominant ideologies, such as the apprenticeship myth that constituted their lower wages, and proved to their country that they too could work skillfully. As seen through the constant movement of female workers throughout the war years, they were given opportunities that never seemed possible before the outbreak of war. With the media support, women continued to fight years after the end of World War One. Though many were displaced, the social effects of the war had already taken place in the minds of women throughout the country. These working women were fully convinced when they left their jobs that they truly had made history, which they did.
Bibliography
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Braybon, Gail Women Workers in the First World War. New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1981.
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Culleton, Claire Working-Class Culture, Women, and Britain, 1914-1921. New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1999.
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Saywell, Shelley Women in War. New York: Viking Press, 1985.
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The History Learning Site: Women in World War One; available from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/women_in_world_war_one.htm; Internet.
Shelley Saywell, Women in War (New York: Viking Press, 1985), 1.
Gail Braybon, Women Workers in the First World War (New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1981), 39.
Claire Culleton, Working-Class Culture, Women, and Britain, 1914-1921 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), 20.
The History Learning Site: Women in World War One; available from http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/women_in_world_war_one.htm; Internet.
