Do You Agree with the View That, in Terms of Employment Opportunities, Women Did Not Gain ‘Any Significant Advantage from Their Wartime Experience’?

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Do you agree with the view that, in terms of employment opportunities, women did not gain ‘any significant advantage from their wartime experience’? Many women, especially shorthand typists and munitions workers, earned for more than before the war and gained greater economic independence. Many women worked away from home were they experienced a sense of liberation from their restricted home lives. Trade unions initially opposed the dilution of labour but eventually recruited many more women. 350,000 women were in unions in 1914, but 600,000 by 1918. Although many women found themselves earning good wages for the first time during the war, women were always paid less than men, and were not promoted as often as their male colleagues. The war did lead to real changes in social attitudes. Women had more freedom after the war. Their clothing became much simpler, with shorter skirts and sleeves. Hairstyles changed and trousers became acceptable for the first time. Employment opportunities related with the significant advantage from their wartime experience. Sources 16 and 17, both written by modern historians, are clear that employment opportunities did not gain ‘any significant advantage from their wartime experience. However source 18, by an extract from the sex disqualification act 1919, believes that a person should not be disqualified on any civil profession, at the time these views were seen as a radical change. Clearly, there is evidence that in terms of employment opportunities, women did not gain ‘any significant advantage from their wartime experience. Source 16 argues that ‘government policies encouraged women to return to their domestic responsibilities’. This is because in 1915 there were the strikes against the use of women workers and some men complained of ‘dilution’, unskilled women taking over the jobs of skilled men. source 16 argues that wartime

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