Women & War Work
The declaration of war at 11 0’clock on the night of 28th July 1914 hit Britain like a seismic shock, unleashing an orgy of military romanticism1 and mass volunteering – by September there were half a million recruits to the services. The euphoria lasted but nine months until March 1915 when 7,000 British troops were killed in the battle of Neuve Chapelle, their shortage of ammunition was revealed and the nation woke up to the possibility that the Kaiser could win the war. Mass mobilisation of men – 4 million by December – and mass production of munitions were now a matter of urgency. There was also the dawning recognition that the war would not soon be over and that the war effort needed to penetrate deeper and deeper into society, inevitably involving women as their men left, many never to return.
Female gas workers carrying 1 cwt sack of coke…. June 1918 © IWM (Q 27999)
By the end of 1915 three times as many women as men were working in munitions. By 1918, 1.5 million were in jobs formerly done by men. For the first time many women earned a living wage and were valued both as workers and for their contribution to the war effort.
With the outbreak of war, many women of the propertied classes began to economise, especially on luxury items, which had the paradoxical effect of factories closing down and a quarter of a million female industrial workers losing their jobs.2 This downturn was short-lived as demand for women’s ‘customary callings’ – food, textiles and clothing – picked up when food shortages had to be averted (the Womens Land Army was formed in 1915) and thousands of uniforms had to be produced. In addition women were now encouraged to ‘substitute’ for men across transport and industry. From 1917 women began to substitute for men in processes and manual work heavier than anything women workers had yet attempted… systems were worked out whereby the muscular strength of three women could do a job that was usually done by two men.3
Women on the Land
In 1914 the countryside began to stir because the production of food at home was now a priority as imports were cut down and the German U-boats threatened merchant shipping. By the autumn of 1916 country wives had formed Women’s Institute groups in 24 localities. They aimed to help the war effort by organising backyard poultry-keeping, fruit-preserving, hay box cookery and vegetable-raising. By 1918 there were 760 groups
Over the next fifty years they were to become so powerful a national pressure-group that Ministers of Agriculture trod warily when confronted by any demands they decided to make.4
Throughout 1915 and 1916 efforts were made by voluntary organisations such as the Women’s Defence Relief Corps as well as by the Government through the War Agricultural Committees of the Board of Trade to induce women to offer their services on the
land and to persuade farmers to accept them.
Join the Women’s Land Army © IWM (Art.IWM PST 16608)
The Women’s Farm and Garden Union was the most important of the bodies which had dealt with women’s work on the land before the war and in the autumn of 1915 started a system of training farms.
Early in 1916 the Government provided a grant, and the Women’s National Land Service Corps was formed as a wartime off-shoot of the Farm and Garden Union to deal with the emergency war-work on the land. By the end of 1916 the demand for women had become greater than could be met by a small voluntary organisation, and as a result of a deputation from the W.N.L.S.C. to the Minister of Agriculture, the Women’s Land Army was instituted early in 1917 as a Women’s Branch of the Board of Agriculture. The W.N.L.S.C. continued to act as the agent of the Land Army for organising the supply of educated women as seasonal workers, and in finding work for holiday volunteers.
In all over 9,000 workers were sent out, and in 1918 the flax harvest was saved by 3,835 holiday workers from the Corps. In August 1919 the number of village women (exclusive of the Land Army) working in agriculture was estimated at 180,523 of whom over 14,000 were working in market and fruit gardens.
It is in these arid statistics that we traverse a central theme in the sociology of women’s employment in the twentieth century, the rise of the business girl, taking the term to cover the whole range from executive secretary to shorthand typist. The growth of large-scale industry and bureaucracy would undoubtedly have brought this development eventually, but it was the war, in creating simultaneously a proliferation of Government committees and departments and a shortage of men, which brought about a sudden and irreversible advance in the economic and social power of a category of women employees which extended from the sprigs of the aristocracy to daughters of the proletariat.5
Elinor Kelly
1(Adam: 52)
2(Adam: 46)
3(Adam:55-63)
4(Adam: 66)
5(Marwick, 2006: 132)
Image attribution:
The Sisters Dulac, Edmund 1917 © IWM (Art.IWM ART 2509) … a member of the Land Army, a nurse, and a munitions worker
Female gas workers carrying 1 cwt sack of coke…. June 1918 © IWM (Q 27999)
Join the Women’s Land Army © IWM (Art.IWM PST 16608)
