Describe the Employment Opportunities of Women in Britain Between 1914 and 1918.

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Describe the Employment Opportunities of Women in Britain Between 1914 and 1918

        

        In 1914, women's roles were traditional ones. Many had housewife duties and did the cooking, cleaning and motherly chores of the household. Upper class and most middle class women were not expected to work. In 1911, a census showed that 90% of all married women did not work at all. But as more and more men joined the army, there was a great demand for more women to work and more jobs became available to them.

   Pre 1914, working class women worked as servants and in factories. In 1914 there were 5.9million women working out of 23.7million. In domestic service, there were 1.5million women working, 900,00 were working in textiles and 500,000 in the sweated trade. Middle class women sometimes worked as lawyers, teachers, teachers or doctors. But this was a very small number and very few middle class married women would be working at all. Upper class women rarely worked either. The few upper class women that did work had much better jobs than the lower class women.

During the war, things began to change. Britain needed to grow it’s own food. Most men were leaving for war and trade routes had been cut. This resulted in more women being asked to work on the land. However many of these women were attracted to jobs in the city due to the better pay. To recruit women, the Women’s Land Army was formed. This was split into three main areas of agriculture, timber cutting and forage. The Women’s Land Army was consisted of middle and upper class women. This was extremely different to what they usually did, as most middle and upper class women were ladies of leisure. They stayed at home while their husbands’ made a living. However, this was only good for women who lived locally, as they were paid eighteen shillings a week, whereas if you lived further away, women had to pay fifteen shillings a week and for their board and keep. This only left them with three shillings a week. Women were also not allowed to leave once they had signed up unless they had special circumstances. This forced women to stay, and work to the bone, as they were not allowed to leave The Women’s Land Army once they had joined.

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        Women also began working in munitions factories. Jobs in munitions factories included bullet making, shells, detonators, and gunpowder. The risks involved in this were exposure to TNT, which decreased fertility and made their skin yellow. Usually it was the working class women who worked in factories. Working in munitions was a totally new opportunity for these women and were attracted by the good pay. These women did enjoy working in the factories as it gave them a lot more freedom than before, because before the war broke out, working class women usually worked in jobs like domestic service. Also, ...

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