How war work led to liberation

As Britain joined in the first global conflict of its kind, it was not just those who went to fight whose lives would be changed forever.

The war altered women’s lives beyond recognition as they found a new freedom and independence that some had only started to strive to achieve.

As hordes of men went to war, the jobs they left behind in Oxford and all over the British Isles had to be filled.

With this came the burden of work as well as looking after their families, but for many it meant more independence, financial gain and a whole new world.

Before the war, women were mainly employed in domestic service and production. Now they found themselves moving to traditional male jobs as part of the war effort.

In 1914, roughly 23 per cent of women were in employment. By 1918 it had almost doubled to 45 per cent.

As war became imminent in 1914, there was a huge volunteer drive from women – with organisations like the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) mobilising to help the war effort.

Many religious groups and charity organisations started up with thousands of women volunteering in soup kitchens, first aid centres and in production.

Other organisations included the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, which within weeks of the declaration of war had mobilised women abroad to serve the British Expeditionary Force as well as the Scottish Women’s Hospital, started by Dr Elsie Maud Inglis, one of the UK’s first female doctors; and the Women’s Voluntary Reserve.

Despite their role being little known, some 656 women are included among the casualties of the First World War, said Kate Marshall, education co-ordinator at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Back at home, a new reliance on women to keep the country running was to prove an important milestone in the fight for women’s independence, but the suffragette movement was put on hold so women could help in the war effort.

“The suffragettes literally stopped what they were doing, turned on their head and joined the government – their former enemy – said ‘look we have to support them, we have to do what we can to help’,” says Marshall.

Many women took over running their husband’s businesses informally, making it hard to work out exactly how many were in work, she said.

“The majority of people were in small businesses and if the husband went to war, the wife then took on that home business to keep the family afloat – it would still be registered under his name and she was not classed as working, she was looking after the family.

“So when we look at figures, it really doesn’t tell us the full picture.

“In 1915 more and more men were going and more and more things on the home front were changing.

“All the war work, and that’s not just making the actual guns and the bullets, that’s making uniforms, sorting out food and logistics: all this was growing. The bigger the army grew, the bigger the behind-the-scenes operation had to grow.

“All these women suddenly had a job to go to, or the jobs they had before the war totally ended. Everyone turned their business over for the war effort.”

For many women, their new jobs meant a new, more adventurous life, often requiring that they left their homes and their controlling male relatives.

“This gave them independence, a sense of adventure,” Marshall says.

“Some of these girls would give up the existence they had had with no chance of bettering yourself, and no chance of getting anywhere else unless you found a boy to marry.

“You would give that up to do something more adventurous in the war work. There was this sense of excitement.”

But the sight of unchaperoned women living away from home, doing things like going out at night, also brought a sense of fear from those with traditional views, she says.

“Lots of people who were working with the women, factory inspectors, factory owners, they were seeing what the women were doing and recognised it.

“But the mass media, masculine politicians, they didn’t want to give the women that accolade of being okay to work in these jobs, because that would change the whole world.

“It would mean they had to give them suffrage, it would mean when the men came back they would have no jobs to go to, and that would affect morale.”

While women were doing the same jobs as men, often they would not be paid the same, with reasons given as tiny differences between what the two sexes did.

“The armed forces and the media really overplayed this, kind of saying: ‘don’t worry, they’re only holding the fort’.”

When the war came to an end, some women were just “happy to get their man back”, she says, but others wanted to cling on to their new-found independence.

“As soon as the war ended the suffragette movement quickly picked up the reins again, they realised they had earned their stripes,” says Marshall.

“And there were those who had suddenly realised, ‘I’ve lost my husband, I’m quite happy now, I’ve got independence’.

“They are suddenly in qualified roles and had seen the world now, albeit the war world, but they had travelled. They weren’t going to let go of that

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