Describe the employment of women in Britain in 1914 at the outbreak of war

As war broke out in 1914 about 1/3 of women were in some type of paid employment. The majority of this was domestic service or secretarial work and most people accepted, there was no place for women in manual labour e. g. dock-labouring, mining or road -digging. A womans role was very a lot as the homemaker. They were regarded as the weaker call down and the sex that had fewer rights than men. Decent women were expected to stay at home and rear the children of the family. They had to obey their husbands. Britains leisure class was kept in comfort by an force of domestic servants.A large landowner with a wife, two children and a 62-roomed house n the West End required an indoor staff of 36. around of the servants accompanied the family to its other homes the country house, the seaside villa, the shooting box in Scotland each of which also had its own separate staff, containing many women. The working day could be a gruelling 17 hours long. The most important female servant of t he household was the housekeeper, known by the title of Mrs, she commanded a platoon of female domestics like ladys maid, housemaids, kitchen maids and the scullion who washed the dishes. pep pill class women were not expected to work. They therefore were involved in charity work and voluntary work also they were heavily involved with the suffr eonttes. Many working class women worked all day at jobs in their own homes, however some working class women worked in factories, to supplement the mens income, which practically wasnt enough. Workrooms were often crowded, dirty, ill lit, ill venti recentlyd and insufficiently heated. The hours permissible under the Factory Acts in 1901 were long. Women and girls over 14 years could be employed 12 hours a day and on Saturday 8 hours.In addition, in certain industries, and dressmaking was one, an additional 2 hours could be worked by women on 30 nights in any 12 months. At the outbreak of war women earned about 65 per cent of the male wage. The employment of little errand girls, usually only 14 years of age was common. Their work was very varied travel rapidly errands, matching materials, and taking out parcels, cleaning the workrooms, and often also helping in the work of the house. To be running around doing odd jobs for the employees of a busy workshop was hard work and tiring.It was not surprising that the young women in those workshops often looked weary and overdone just there were plenty of girls to take their place, so they would not give in. Many others were employed to work on the surface of coal mines or on search docks at hard, tiring, physical labour. A sexist outlook upon women in the workplace operated throughout this period. It resulted in skill definitions and pay differentials. Womens work was usually considered unskilled, where as a man doing the same job would be considered skilled.For example welding was perceived as a skilled job when men did it but when women became welders during the First sphere War it was seen as unskilled, with women being paid half the male rate. Middle class women attempted to get into professions as doctors, lawyers, accountants and bankers but found it incredibly difficult. The confidence of men was that they were not intelligent enough and too weak emotionally therefore unable to cope with the work. They did find employment easier to find as teachers, as this was dealing with children and they were able to find employment in the white-collar industries as clerks, telephonists and secretaries.However female clerks would earn less than one third of the male wage, and a female typist would earn i1 a week compared to i3 a week earned by a man. Women from the upper and middle classes came to have more opportunities in the late nineteenth century. This was particularly so in education. Higher education was open to women, although they were restricted in taking degrees in either Oxford or Cambridge. Most women lacked such opportunities. Women mainl y moved into the low-skill, low-pay sweat shop sector as they were denied access to the new technologies.Female factory workers were generally worse treated than men in pay, breeding and opportunities, and the trade unions mainly male organisations co-operated with the management or the definition of skills, which affected pay, were controlled by men and favoured them skilled women were poorly recognised. Women were also paid piece pass judgment and found their wage lowered if they earned too much. One factory inspector remarked that What can one do when a girl is earning as much as 15 shillings a week but lower the piece rate? In a survey just before the war the well-disposed commentator and reformer, S.Rowntree, had argued that i1 a week was necessary in order to live above poverty but few women received this amount. In J. M Barries prank What Ever Woman Knows (1908), John Shand, the railwayman turned MP, owes his success as a debater to his wife Maggie, who has transformed h is boring speeches when she typed them up. Women had achieved some degree of married equality and been given some educational opportunities by 1914. They had also begun to make some inroads into traditional male occupations and they had focused political action on kind the vote.