Firstly, I will look at the way in which the First World War altered the concept of work for women. It is largely forgotten that ‘nearly a third of Britain’s women were already working when war broke out5. The outbreak of war did not as assumed create more jobs. It did in fact do the opposite, because there was such a huge drop in demand for products made in industries where women workers were concentrated, ‘cotton, linen, silk, dressmaking, confectionary’6, it was not until April 1915, after eight months of being at war, that the amount of women in the work force returned to pre-war levels. With their men folk starting to leave for war, ‘women began gradually and quietly filling in for missing fathers, brothers, and husbands in family businesses such as delivery services and window washing’7 When in 1915.
more men left for the ‘front’ munitions work hit a critical low point, women were not seen as the answer to the shortage of labour, as in fact the cabinet of the day ‘considered importing Belgian male workers; then decided to use what was perceived as a largely, ‘ untapped work force, which they saw as docile, pliable and well suited to repetitive tasks’8, this untapped work force was of course women. This came about when the ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George and his old foe, the Suffragist Emmaline Pankhurst, joined forces in the spring of 1915 to create the War Service for Women Campaign’9.
Women started leave other areas of work they had previously worked in, such as domestic service, where ‘ 400,000 women left to enter into munitions factories and other jobs, even with this large number leaving, it did not as suggested wipe out domestic service completely, even though it would never go back to they way it was before the war’10. Areas that saw an increase in women employees were, the transport sector were there was an increase from ’18,000 in 1914 to 117,000 in 1918’11. Women became bus conductors or drivers, two such women were’ Elizabeth Lee and the Countess of Limerick who both enjoyed their work, they both acknowledge if it had not been for the war they would not have had the chance to do’12. There was also an increase in, clerical, commercial, administrative, and educational activities, after the war ‘ many women did stay in office and shop- work which was becoming less popular with men anyway’13, so this is a gain in a work area which would have in time be conceded to women. Another area into which women made inroads was engineering, and after the war ended in 1918, ‘a few women were quite determined to carve a niche for women in the profession they founded the Women’s Engineering Society in 1919’14. The fighters for this cause were was made up of mainly educated women who ‘wanted to open up trade, commerce, industry and the civil service, this battle was to continue in to the 1920s and 1930s’15.
February 1915 saw the establishment of the Women’s Volunteer Reserves, for some of the women did not just want to knit, but wanted a more active role, when the ‘ Women’s Police Force was described as an occupation for gentle women’16. This description was more than Mrs Emmaline Pankhurst and the W.S.P.U could cope with, so arranged a march into the centre of London with ’30,000 women to demand the right to serve’17. 1917 saw the Women’s land army being formed to attract women to work on the land, but as pay was lower than that ‘ offered in munitions factories, and that farmers did not want women workers the response was poor’18. This led to in ‘ 1917-18 labour if soldiers being diverted from active service, also the use of enemy prisoners of war contributed more than women to the bringing of the harvest’19, it was not until the Second World War that women became a valued asset in land work. 1917 and 1918 also saw the formation of the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRENS) and the Women’s Royal Air Force Service (WRAFS). This became an area which was mainly the domain of adventurous middle and upper class of women, who before the war had been ‘ tied to the apron strings of the mothers, the purses of their father or husbands’20. These women suddenly who found that they were capable of earning a wage, with that came a ‘ new found freedom and independence of working away from home and its restraints’21. The small foray made into this male dominated field, were to remain just that and even today women are often seen as curiosities in the armed forces, and are still fighting for the recognition of equality even in 2004.
When women started to enter the male dominated work force in 1918 it raised concerns, members of the women’s movement main concern was that there were ‘no registers that promised a specific wage for women, that detail was up to the employer’22. The men on the other hand, main concern was that their employers would want to keep the women on in the work force as cheap labour after the war, instead of employing returning men. That many women would be pleased to return at the end of the war to their previous role as wives and mother, after years of hard work and long hours, along with tending to family need and home need, was not even considered at the time by these men. ‘‘‘Equal pay for equal work”, became a constant topic for discussion; this would not come into fruition until after the Second World War’23. One of the women who campaigned for equal right at this time was One of the women who championed for this was ‘ Mary Macarthur (13.08.1860-01.01.1921) Socialist pacifist and Trade union leader,
Who insisted that women should not undercut
men and that men should, in turn, back women’s
right to a living wage, she probably did more than
any other single person to right the wrongs of the
sweated women worker at the beginning of the twentieth
century in Britain20.
50,000 women answered the call to go to work, this is not clear if it was for pay or due to patriotism before ‘May 1915 when Prime Minister Hebert Henry Asquith urged a cheering crowd “let there not be a man or a women among us who could not then be able to say ‘I was not idle’11. The irony about this is that there was in fact over, ’40,000 women were still on the books of the labour exchanges, which gives further proof that the image of ‘the working women’ being pushed for by the War Service for Women did not in this case always match the actual reality12.
The need to have women work in the workforce required ‘ more than a change of heart by male employers and employees, it also needed powerful inducements to females, one such inducement was,
The call of patriotism eroded the restraints
on taking, work that status and respectability
imposed on married women of most classes,
and on most middle and upper class women
whether married or single, For once, women’s
role as homemaker and child bearer was not
automatically considered her highest duty.13
This was in direct contrast with the Maternity and Child Welfare Act of 1918, which offered some ante and post natal care ‘but had more emphasis on the health of the child than on the mother, so child death fell, while maternal mortality rose between wars’14. Two women who fought for better social medicine for women, especially working women were, ‘Lady Florence Barrett, CH, CBE, MD, MS, B.Sc (1867-07.08.145. and Ethel Bentham, MD, JP. (1870-19.01.1931.) 15, even then the start in 1919 of The Ministry of Health, it was not until 1948 and the formation of the National Health Service the did welfare for mothers as well as her chid finally become a priority in the welfare system.
