What was a nice little girl? Oh a nice little girl was a very feminine little girl, you see it
was a man's world totally and completely. Women were not supposed to have much in their brains,
and of course we were not brought up to careers at all. The one and only career was a good marriage.
At the start of the 20th century Britain was one of the greatest powers on earth. Yet despite
its wealth as a nation many British people's lives were marked with poverty and inequality.
Women had few opportunities and few rights. The First World War is often thought of as having
a wholly positive impact on women's lives: women stepped into men's jobs for the first time ever,
thousands of women served abroad along the front lines, women's football even became a hugely
popular sport, and the war is thought to have strengthened their case for the right to vote.
But the reality is more complicated. Not all of the opportunities for women were positive,
lots of the changes were reversed as soon as the war was over, and cultural attitudes towards women
were not that easily changed. So did the first world war really transform women's lives at all?
Before the war, women's employment was highly stratified by class,
working-class women were broadly accustomed to working long as the
hours of dirty sometimes heavy work in areas such as domestic service and unequal pay was the norm.
There was little to no legal protection for women against domestic violence and very little
protection for young working-class girls from sexual abuse or being forced into prostitution.
Across the board women were expected to get married and look after the home.
Britain entered the war in August 1914 and over the next four years
some 4.9 million men had signed up or had been conscripted to join the army.
Millions of women were already working prior to the outbreak of the first world war
but now women took on more active roles more highly paid roles and more dangerous roles.
They were encouraged to ensure that the men in their families signed up,
women were encouraged in the press and through colourful impactful poster campaigns. With the
men drawn away to the armed forces, opportunities opened up for women.
117,000 women were employed in transport compared to just 18,000 women previously.
The first world war also saw women enter heavy industry for the first time.
In response to the shell shortage of 1915, huge factories were set
up. Women were known as canaries in the factories as they had to handle the TNT
used as the explosive agent in munitions which caused their skin to turn yellow.
Of course we all had bright yellow faces you see because we had no gas masks in those times.
The conductors used to say in the trams, you'll die in two years cock. We used to say well we
don't mind dying for our country!. As i say we were so young we didn't realize, but they used
to call us canaries, we were bright yellow and all this front hair was was all ginger you know.
In total around 900,000 women worked in the munitions industry and it was particularly
hazardous work. There were several large factory explosions during the war including
at Chilwell in July 1918 where 134 workers were killed and more than 250 were injured.
Due to the dangerous nature of this work
it was considered to be relatively well paid compared to other jobs open to women
and yet across the board women still earned as little as half the wages of men.
It come right down to nothing almost about a pound i think as far as i can
remember it was very very low i know. Your wages? Yes very low.
For working women with children, child care could be a problem. The pressing need for women to work
in munitions did prompt the government to provide some funds towards day nurseries and by 1917
there were more than 100 day nurseries across the country. However there was no provision for women
working in any other form of employment and most had to rely on friends and family for childcare.
This was still the overriding attitude, that these changes were necessary
temporary measures to support the war effort and should not lead to legal or cultural change.
Pressure from women for their own uniformed service began as early
as August 1914 but it was not until the middle of the war that the government began planning
for the women's auxiliary services. More men were needed for fighting which meant training
women to replace them in non-combatant roles in December 1916 the women's army auxiliary corps
known as the WAAC was established, the Women's Royal Naval Service was formed in November 1917
and the Women's Royal Air Force was set up on the 1st of April 1918.
In total over a hundred thousand women joined Britain's armed forces during the First World War.
No I had nothing in my mind except that I got the chance to go to London
and I had the chance to do a worthwhile job. It was the lure of adventure of course. You see
and i think it was just here as an opportunity.
When i got in that blitz that made my mind up for me. I got hit, I got hit in this arm
and they took us to some pathologies hospital
and I said to the girl laying next to me i said when i get out of here i said I'm going to join
up because I said if I'm going to get knocked to date I'll go where i expect it and I did.
One of the major ways that women served during the war was nursing.
This was also a key role that brought women abroad near the front lines.
Nursing in the First World War was exhausting,
harrowing dangerous work. Although it had long been an occupation associated with women nursing
as a profession by its very necessity mushroomed during the first world war. Trained nurses were
licensed professionals they'd spent years training and they were paid whereas voluntary nurses better
known as Voluntary Aid Detachments or VADs comprise mainly young middle and upper class
women in its ranks. By 1918 there were over 90,000 Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses in the red cross.
I used to take that ambulance out and drive the length behind the trenches sometimes to get
some some people out you had to drive in the pitch dark no lights whatsoever
from the trenches and if you can imagine yourself heavy roads with deep mud troops coming up guns
coming up and then almost pulling slither as the ambulance slid off the paddle into the mud.
Were you shocked by the kinds of injuries you saw?
One would have been shocked if one could afford to be, I mean that was what was our salvation
we were thrown head first into the work but we had to do something about it. I remember one
occasion I shall never forget; a patient came in with his head bandaged up and
only his eyes showing and as I took bandage after bandage after bandage, I thought to myself there's
going to be no face left here at all, and then I realized that he was gazing intently at me,
and I thought, he's waiting to see my reaction. Then of course it was absolutely different I
chatted to him and teased him a little and tried to make him smile.
By 1918 more than 17,000 nurses had served close to the trenches
working in field hospitals all along the Western Front.
On the home front, working together in large numbers opened up new leisure opportunities for
women. Sport was encouraged among female workers as it was thought to be good for their health
and moral well-being and many munitions factories developed their own ladies football teams. Women's
football was established before the First World War but it really took off during this period.
Ultimately this was to ensure the mental and health and physical well-being, which in turn kept
the factories productive. However they were really successful with the Dick Kerr Ladies in Preston
for example drawing large crowds at matches. Fronted by Captain Lily Parr; she was openly gay,
over six foot tall and she scored over a thousand goals during her time on the team. Sadly all
this came to an end at the end of the war in 1921. The FA ruled that women should be banned
from playing in football league games reasons given were spurious suggestions that the game was
too physical and may hamper a woman's ability to have a child for example, whereas the real reason
was probably quite simply that it was becoming too popular and a potential challenge to men's games.
It was a decision which was only overturned in 1969 when the ban was eventually lifted.
The ban on women's football at the end of the war was not the only instance in
which opportunities that had opened in wartime or once again closed. On the 11th of November 1918,
the Armistice was signed. Tens of thousands of men were demobilized and returned to Britain,
to the lives and jobs they had held before the war.
Men seeking jobs after 1918 were almost always prioritized over women and women were forced
back into low-paid roles or domestic service for many women, their experiences during the
war had been temporary and short-lived but there were some inevitable long-term consequences.
Over seven hundred thousand British men had died during the first world war
that's nine percent of all British men under the age of 45 and more women than ever were now single
it's certainly true that some of these women chose to remain unmarried professions such as teaching
or medicine were opening up to women but only if they remained unmarried in 1918 women over
30 were given the vote. Some have argued that the modern emancipation of women would not have been
possible without the contribution of women who served and worked during the First World War.
We were in this hotel and a raid started; we'd got two
officers there suffering from shell shock and the men with them were in a panic
and Staccard went over to the piano and she played for two hours while the raid last and we all sang,
and these men didn't know it was a raid on the the shell shock officers. And afterwards
they were so overwhelmed, the men were, and they said well if anybody ever says a bad word about
the WAACs, they have to answer to us for it after this. Because of course people
were very ready to criticize us, we were the women who followed them in France of course.
But there were several incidents like that where the girls showed outstanding courage and they
really had it. So I don't know, I really learned to admire women, i admired them tremendously.
But the steps that had been made during this time were soon masked by other
matters. Britain was steeped in unemployment and poverty and soon began to prepare for another war.
The war had not shifted attitudes fundamentally enough to mean that
women's contribution to the world of work
wasn't anything more than for the duration to be wound up as soon as the war was over.
What is certain is that the war had changed the world and Britain
in immeasurable ways not all changes brought about by the war stayed in place
but it is possible that it laid the groundwork for greater change to come
when war was declared again in 1939 this time women were readily factored into the war effort.
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