The Inter-war Years: 1918-1939 | Striking Women

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• Post WWI and work 
• Women's work?

Post WWI and work 

After the First World War many returning servicemen reclaimed the available jobs, and the numbers of women workers, particularly in industry and trade declined.  During the 1920s and 30s the UK economy was plunged into a recession leading to very high levels of unemployment.The British workforce were very angry.  In 1929 there was a general strike which paralysed the country and workers from the more depressed areas including Tyneside and South Wales set out for  London on a hunger march to bring their plight to the government’s attention. So it was not surprising that many women who tried to find work that made use of the skills they had gained in the industries during the WWI were vilified by the press for ‘taking up ex-servicemen’s jobs’. Although unemployment benefit had been introduced through the National Insurance Act 1911, women were not eligible for benefits if they refused to take up available jobs in domestic service. All this served to force women back towards what was considered ‘women’s work’ like laundry, dressmaking, domestic work and work in ‘sweated industries’. During this period, the government replicated women’s unequal pay rates in the labour market by setting the unemployment benefit for women at a lower rate than that for men.However, some job opportunities in new industries and professions did open up for women through the 1920s and 30s. Following the Education Act of 1918 which raised the school leaving age to 14, women were better educated. The Sex Disqualification Act of 1919 made it somewhat easier for women to go to university and take up professional jobs as teachers, nurses and a few even qualified as doctors. Middle class women benefited from these increased opportunities. During this time women began to get jobs in increasing numbers in the civil service accounting for about a quarter of all such posts by 1935, though these were mostly at clerical and administrative grades rather than the technical and professional jobs which were still dominated by men.

Distinguish

Distinguish

20 mins

 

Categorise the following statements according to the list provided below:

• Women were better educated as a result of the Education Acts of 1902 and 1918. 
• There were more job opportunities for women in the 1920s and 1930s due to better education. 
• Many women found work as clerks, teachers and nurses.
• The nature of industries changed and new types of work emerged. 
• Many women found work in the new light industries e.g. making electrical goods.
• The Sex Disqualification Act of 1919 made it easier for women to go to university and enter the professions. Middle class women benefited from increased job opportunities.
• The Marriage Bar prevented many women from staying at work after marriage. 
• The civil service did not allow women to work after marriage.
• Working conditions in the home remained very hard. Cleaning, washing and cooking took up a great deal of time. 
• New electrical appliances such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners slightly improved the working conditions of some housewives in the 1930s.
• By the 1930s, about one third of women in Britain worked outside the home. 
• One tenth of married women worked.

Categories:

Types of Work

Restrictions on Women 

Opportunities for Women 

Change 

You can create your own categories or add to the ones provided.

 

Women's work?

The 5th Hunger march organised by the National Unemployed Workers' Movement which left Glasgow on 22 January and reached Hyde Park London on 25 February 1934. The women's contingent included many textile workers.

Credit: 

TUC Collections, London Metropolitan University

Some jobs in new and existing industries came to be considered ‘women’s work’ such as assembly work in the engineering, electrical, food and drink industries, as well as clerical work, typing and counter-sales. However, these jobs were low paid and involved long working hours and shift work. Women workers were usually excluded from supervisory roles or work that was considered  to be “skilled”, despite women’s successful roles in such jobs during WWI.By the 1930s about one third of British women over 15 worked outside the home, of whom nearly a third still worked in domestic service. However, only one tenth of married women worked. Predominant social expectations at that time reinforced the view that  caring and cooking  was exclusively ‘women’s work’. Indeed without electrical appliances like washing machines, domestic labour was time-consuming and hard work. The civil service, the education sector and new professions operated a “marriage bar”, which meant that women had to resign their posts when they got married. Even those who defied these unofficial rules found that it was impossible to continue working once they had children.Trade unions, which were led by men, continued to be concerned that women would be employed as cheap labour in these new industries.  The wartime demand for wage equality had previously been utilised to recruit women to trade unions. But during the inter-war years most unions drew back from this demand. Instead they actively campaigned to restrict women’s employment in certain industries by calling for the stricter implementation of a ‘marriage bar’ or the introduction of such a bar in new industries. So in the interwar years the goal of equal pay receded. By 1931, a working woman's weekly wage had returned to the pre-war situation of half the male rate in most industries. During this period, women gained the right to vote and this led to some early attempts to mobilise the women’s votes on issues of concern to women, including issues at work.

Discuss

Discuss

10 mins

Watch this clip Women and Work in the Inter-War Period

1. What role did education play in helping women enter the workplace?
2. What 'social changes' did working women experience?
3. What were the political changes that took place during this period?

Women campaigning against the Unemployment Insurance Act in 1920 because the act provided for lower rates of unemployment benefit for women and women were refused benefit if they rejected work in the domestic service (unlike men).

Credit: 

TUC Collections, London Metropolitan University

Objectives

After undertaking the activities within this section students will be able to:

1. Explain the changes that took place in relation to women in the workplace after WWI.
2. Describe the action working women took in response to these changes.
3. Evaluate the changes to British society, women's lives and politics, which occurred post WWI. 

Gallery

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  Recruitment leaflet as part of the TUC national campaign in 1926 to recruit women in the trade unions

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  After the extension of suffrage to some women, a leaflet which mobilises women and encourages women to vote Labour in the 1924 general elections.

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  Women campaigning against the Unemployment Insurance Act in 1920 because the act provided for lower rates of unemployment benefit for women and women were refused benefit if they rejected work in the domestic service (unlike men).

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Case studies

• Louise Jermy

Louise Jermy

Louise was born in Hampshire, on 30 January, 1877. Her mother died when she was 18 months old and her father married again.  Louise was taken out of school at the age of eleven to work in her stepmother’s home-based laundry business. For the next two years, Louise had to fetch and carry the linen and turn the mangle, a type of roller that was used to wring the water out of the clothes before washing machines were invented.  Louise had a difficult childhood as her stepmother would often hit her with anything that came to hand, including a stair-rod, a poker, and a broom handle. Louise became partially disabled with tubercular hip disease when she was thirteen.In her mid teens, Louise became determined to leave her difficult home life. Despite her disability and her father’s opposition, she decided to find work as a domestic servant. Louise worked in various households from the early 1890s onwards.In 1911, Louise married John Jermy and went on to have 2 children, both sons. During this period of her life she did not undertake paid work. But in 1921, John Jermy died of double pneumonia.Louise began work as a farm labourer soon after his funeral, but this job did not last long. Given her ill-health and her responsibility for two young children aged 9 and 5, Louise found it difficult to obtain work.  She finally found regular employment as a laundry maid in a manor house.When Louise was fifty-seven years old she published a memoir, which is how we know the story of her life. She died in 1952, aged seventy-five, in the cottage in Wroxham which she had shared with her husband.Source: Louise Jermy, Memories of a Working Woman (Norwich: Goose & Son, 1934). A summary of and extract from the memoir are included in Barbara Kanner (ed.), Women in Context: 200 Years of British Women’s Autobiographers (New York: G.K. Hall, 1997), pp.470-71.For more on domestic service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/women_employment_01.shtml

Wasserträgerin: crayon and coal sketch.

Credit: 

Heinrich Zille

Women and work

• Introduction
• 19th and early 20th century
• World War I: 1914-1918
• The inter-war years: 1918-1939
• World War II: 1939-1945
• Post World War II: 1946-1970
• From the 1970s to the present

Links

Women and work in the inter-war period A video exploring the ways in which Britain changed due to WWI and women's entry into previously male occupations during this period.