Women Workers in the First World War

Gail Braybon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415622707
• eBook ISBN: 9781136248665
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Commentators writing soon after the outbreak of the First World War about the classic problems of women's employment (low pay, lack of career structure, exclusion from "men's jobs") frequently went on to say that the war had "changed all this", and that women's position would never be the same again.

This book looks at how and why women were employed, and in what ways society's attitudes towards women workers did or did not change during the war. Contrary to the mythology of the war, which portrayed women as popular workers, rewarded with the vote for their splendid work, the author shows that most employers were extremely reluctant to take on women workers, and remained cynical about their performance. The book considers attitudes towards women's work as held throughout society. It examines the prejudices of government, trade unions and employers, and considers society's views about the kinds of work women should be doing, and their "wider role" as the "mothers of the race". First published in 1981, this is an important book for anyone interested in women's history, or the social history of the twentieth century.

Companion volumes, Women Workers in the Second World War by Penny Summerfield, and Out of the Cage: Women's Experiences in Two World Wars by Gail Braybon and Penny Summerfield, are also published by Routledge.

1
Women’s Position in the Labour Force Before 1914

No analysis of women’s work during the First World War would be complete without some description of the conditions and attitudes which existed before 1914. Obviously I can only touch upon certain aspects of women’s work here – other writers have covered the nineteenth century in far more depth¹ – but in this chapter I want to do two things: first, to establish the nature of women’s industrial work before the war and, secondly, to give some idea of prevailing attitudes towards women as workers. The years between 1890 and 1914 concern me most, but I shall give a fairly brief description of women’s work in earlier years, as the pattern of labour which existed by the turn of the century was established by the Industrial Revolution. Similarly, the feelings expressed about Vomen’s role’ in the 1900s had their roots in Victorian ideas about suitable work, and the duties of wives and mothers. Although this is very much a background chapter, certain features of particular relevance to later chapters should become clear, particularly the close association between job opportunities open to working-class women and ideas about Women’s Role in society.

The Industrial Revolution and its Effects

The Industrial Revolution had a profound effect upon the nature of women’s paid work and their role in the home.² The development of the factory system led to the separation of ‘home’ and ‘work’ for those drawn into the new industries. In earlier years much industrial work was done in the homes of the workers: carding, spinning and weaving of wool and cotton, knitting, glove making, etc., were done by men, women and children, at the hours they chose. Such work was often interspersed with agricultural labour for local farmers, or work upon the cottagers’ own gardens or common land. Many families thus had a varied source of income, and the whole family was a productive unit, producing goods for its own consumption and for sale to others. Typically, in the textile industry the wages earned by the whole family were paid to the man, as the ‘head’ of the family, even though wives and children worked just as hard. Different processes were performed by men, women and children under the same roof, and they were paid a ‘family wage’.

The Industrial Revolution took place during the Agrarian Revolution – which involved the enclosure of common land and the modernisation of farms – and thus male and female workers in all areas found their land disappearing, while those in the textile industry were faced with competition from powered machinery.³ Textiles lay at the heart of the Industrial Revolution; first cotton spinning, then carding and weaving went into the factory. Although handworkers attempted for a while to compete, this was impossible as machinery became more sophisticated. Wool saw less speedy changes and many other hand industries remained, but cotton had set the pace, and factory work was regarded as increasingly normal.

A completely different pattern of life was established for both male and female workers in the new industries, and outside. Deprived of additional income from common land, and of work in domestic industries, those in many areas became dependent upon labouring full-time for farmers. Those in the emergent textile towns had to adjust to life in the factory. The cotton industry had employed many women in the home; it now employed them in weaving sheds and card rooms, and they were often preferred, with children, to men. Even at this early stage of industrialisation they were said to be more docile and cooperative and more amenable to the discipline of the factory, which many men resisted bitterly. They were also cheaper to employ than men. The old idea of the ‘family wage’, which had never been appropriate to single women living alone, even in the pre-industrial age, was adapted to fit the changing circumstances. Women were paid less than men because it was assumed that they were living with husbands or fathers who were also working. Working men increasingly felt that women were taking jobs which should have gone to men, and they argued that as women were classed as dependants, men’s employment should be given priority. Employers were reluctant to accept this philosophy to begin with, eager though they were to exploit the idea that women required less money, but the developing labour organisations and trade unions took up the cause of working-class men, rather than women, and they were quite prepared to press for the exclusion of women from certain jobs, partly for economic reasons, partly for reasons which will be discussed shortly.

By the mid-nineteenth century women made up the bulk of power-loom weavers, and were seen as natural recruits for any other mechanised industries. They were also being employed as domestic servants in ever increasing numbers – far more women than men were servants throughout the century. At the same time, they were being withdrawn from mining, which was now considered to be unsuitable work for them – although many women did hard and heavy work in agriculture at lower wages, and there remained thousands of women who still worked long and tedious hours in cottage industries and aroused little attention from middle-class investigators (with the notable exception of the handloom weavers). The pattern of employment for men, women and children which existed in 1914 was established during the second half of the nineteenth century. Men and women in the factory trades went out to work, leaving their homes for more than a dozen hours a day, were usually paid in cash, and bought food, clothes and fuel with these wages, where once they had grown food, made clothes and cut wood. The house was no longer the centre of industry, and no longer the place where goods were produced for the consumption of the family. Running a home, which had once been a full-time task, and included care of garden and animals, now became a matter of cleaning, cooking and child care. Child care meant looking after children who had once been occupied in domestic industry themselves; formerly men and women could supervise their children’s activities while they were all working; as adults now went out to work, and children were steadily withdrawn from the factories and mines which had been so eager to employ them in the early days of industrialisation, it was clear that somebody had to take care of them. Although the development of state education ensured that they would be supervised for part of the day, schooldays were shorter than workdays, children did not start until the age of four or five,⁴ and they went home at lunch-time. It was assumed that women, those who had always organised home life, should stay at home to look after the children.

The flourishing factory system affected the labour of both sexes, but the repercussions were different for men and women. Women were established as quick, docile workers, ideal for machine minding, but they were also seen increasingly as men’s competitors. They found themselves capable of earning independently (instead of earning as part of the family unit), but also encountered the belief that they were taking work away from men by working for lower wages, and that they should, if married, retire to look after their children. Women had not given up paid work on marriage in pre-industrial times; those who worked in agriculture or in the hand industries had been expected to help maintain the family. But attitudes were changing as society changed. This was partly because children had to be looked after by an ‘unoccupied’ adult. It was also because men saw the retreat of married women from paid work as improving their own chances of finding and holding work. But there was another factor in operation as well. The new middle classes did not approve of married women working. To them a leisured wife was a sign of a man’s success – alone, he was making enough money to keep his family in comfort. Throughout the first sixty or so years of the nineteenth century, the number of middle-class men and women was increasing, and their standard of living rose steadily. The money they acquired went on houses, possessions, large families and servants. Middle-class women were withdrawn not only from paid labour, but from many of the domestic tasks which had occupied their mothers and grandmothers. Their role was to devote themselves to their husbands, and, above all, to their children: motherhood was the consummation of the world’s joy to a true woman’,⁵ or, as Frances Power Cobbe put it: ‘the great and paramount duties of a mother and wife once adopted, every other interest sinks, by the beneficent laws of our nature, into a subordinate place in normally constituted minds.’⁶ The home became the middle-class man’s retreat from the world of business and competition, and the wife who presided over this retreat was not to be sullied by paid work herself. Domestic work was also unsuitable; she was supposed to spend her time educating her children while servants performed the menial tasks. Large numbers of cheap servants were vital to this world.

What, it may be asked, has this scheme of things to do with the domestic lives of the working classes? In many ways it was entirely inappropriate. Although working men were generally paid more than women, this wage alone was seldom enough to support families in any degree of comfort. A skilled man might be able to support a wife and a number of children, but well-paid skilled men were in the minority. In any case, even the most steady workman could find himself laid off or ill, and the only aid the state offered was in the workhouse. A family dependent upon a single wage-earner was very vulnerable. For those working-class women who did give up work on marriage, life was very different from the middle-class ideal. They could not devote themselves to the moral education of their children as they had far too much domestic work to do. This work was often made harder by the fact that only one wage was coming in – cheaper food was bought, more clothes had to be altered or mended, accommodation was worse, washing was done at home instead of being sent to the laundry. Many married women were sacked from factory work when they married, or when their first child arrived, but found that they had to take in washing or sewing or go out cleaning in order to make ends meet.

But the concept of the ‘idle’ wife was increasingly influential. Working women were sacked on marriage simply because a number of manufacturers also believed that they should be at home looking after homes and husbands. Pressure groups forced Parliament to consider what was ‘suitable’ work for women who were, or would become, wives and mothers – and governments which were usually reluctant to interfere at all in industry nevertheless passed Factory Acts limiting women’s labour. Middle-class authors and investigators had much power when backed by an outraged electorate. Wanda Neff described this influence in her book Victorian Working Women:

But even while economists and the manufacturers were satisfied with the general status of women in the textile factories, other forces entered the question. The sentimental prejudices of the average Englishman were arraigned against a system which, in his opinion, attacked the institution of the home, ranked by him above scientific theories or private fortunes … All women were regarded in the first half of the nineteenth century solely as potential mothers. The worker with her own earnings was, accordingly, an affront against nature and the protective instincts of man. That the family was affected by the labour of girls and women in the mills was a consideration that raised general concern. The question of the health of human beings who were entrusted with the responsibility of the next generation, the conflict of factory work and long hours with domestic life and with a mother’s care of her home and children, the moral and spiritual degradation which might result from the employment of females outside their homes – with all this most of the literature dealing with the new industrial age was primarily concerned.⁷

This ideology of women and the home had a more insidious influence also. Skilled working men aspired to middle-class respectability. For them too a non-working wife became a status symbol, and they readily adopted the idea that wives should devote themselves to the comfort of husbands and children. Many trade unionists, fighting for better wages and more secure employment, also adopted this ideology. A non-working wife seemed to be the answer to many problems. As she withdrew from the work-force she ceased to compete with men; she provided a comfortable retreat for the hard-working man; she did all the domestic chores; she kept the children from harm. More and more she appeared to be a ‘right’ that the working man could aspire to, and even a symbol of the working class’s struggle against capitalism. When all men earned good wages, their wives need work no longer.

Although women were theoretically withdrawn from underground mining during the nineteenth century, and restrictions on night work and long hours were adopted in the new factory trades, many married women continued to work, in spite of social pressure not to. A large number of them were hidden workers – those who did paid work in their homes for atrocious wages, or worked a few hours a day as char-women. Others worked for occasional spells, when the family particularly needed the money, or returned to work when widowed. Only in the cotton and pottery industries did many women continue to go out to work after marriage on a regular basis. These worked under the close scrutiny of society: MPs, novelists, philanthropists, all took it upon themselves to study the ill-effects of such work upon homes, husbands and children. To begin with, this concern often stemmed from a general distaste for the effects of the factory system upon established life, but increasingly it became centred upon women. It is worth looking at views of w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Preface
• 1. Women’s Position in the Labour Force before 1914
• 2. The Need for Women’s Labour in the First World War
• 3. Women in Industry: (1) The Attitudes of Employers and Trade Unions
• 4. Women in Industry: (2) The Economic Problems of Women’s Labour, and the Question of Equal Pay
• 5. Biology as Destiny: Women, Motherhood and Welfare
• 6. Women’s Public Image during the War
• 7. Demobilisation and the Aftermath
• 8. The Position of Women Workers in the Twenties
• 9. Final Comments
• Select Bibliography
• Index