This is when women first began to work for political equality with men. They pushed for equal opportunities involving their careers, working conditions and wages, and the right to own property. A breakthrough came in 1916 when Robert Borden granted the sisters, wives, and daughters of soldiers the right to vote. Nurses serving in the forces were also added to that list. Unfortunately, after the war ended many women were pushed to the side, as the female factory workers, ambulance drivers, and nurses
A wider range of jobs became available to them, they gained more independence and weren’t viewed as second citizens but most importantly, World War One lead to women in Britain gaining the vote. Before the First World War, The majority of women stayed at home and their priorities were looking after the family and the house. Women were seen as the property of their husband. The variety of women’s jobs was very narrow and most women had never had a proper job in their lives. During the war, asso many men were involved in fighting, countless women had a job whether it was working in a munition factory, driving an ambulance or working for the transport of London.
Many women also worked in aircraft factories fixing damage warplanes. Women would work 80 hours a week helping save time and money by fixing planes so they could fly again rather then having to build new ones (HubPages). Doing so was a very effective way of getting more pilots in the air to help win the war. Women worked long and hard hours to help produce weaponry and tools for soldiers, which in the end, was one of the biggest factors to how
Using my own research i will discover whether the World War One had a positive effect on the role of women. After the immediate rise in female unemployment at the beginning of the war due to the ‘middle-classes wish to economise’ (first world war, accessed 07/01/09), the only option to replace the volunteers gone to front was to employ women in the jobs they had left behind. This was supported by all the major feminist groups, who suddenly ‘became avid patriots and organisers of the women in support of the war effort’ (war and gender, accessed 22/01/09). Overall women’s employment increased from ‘three million in 1914 to five million in 1918’ (Murphy, p373, 2000). For many of the women the war was ‘a genuinely liberating experience’ (first world war, accessed 07/01/09), and made the women feel useful as citizens.
Women learned the ways of men (doing business and taking care of finances) while the men were away at war. Because of this they desired more equal marriages and wanted a say in decisions. They also wanted to marry for love instead of economics. Men finally began teaching women in schools which eventually led to women teaching other women. Abigail Adams reminded her husband to not forget the women in the constitution which is significant because it was the beginning of women’s rights.
There was a massive disruption of the industries in which women were mostly employed, such as dress-making and textiles. This, in the end, was actually a benefit. As war work became available, such as munitions factories, many of those women could now work in a higher paid job as well as do their part in the war effort. Women in the domestic services even left their jobs in order to work for higher paid jobs2. The first world war gave women more opportunity in the workplace as more occupations were open to them and the war also
Between 1914 and 1918, British women made significant contributions to the war effort in many ways. Most notably they emancipated more men to the front-lines, so their home country would have a greater chance of success in the First World War. British women did this through many ways. Firstly, they encouraged recruitment, which led more men to participate in the war. Secondly, the women kept the country going by sustaining the country’s labor needs.
Firstly, employment for women throughout the war had a drastic improvement; many jobs became available for women to choose from. This was due to the gaps that men left in employment, after most of them went to war in 1914. Source A2 for example, clearly supports the interpretation that the number of jobs that women participated in increased from the years 1914 to 1918. This is because, the source is in the form of a bar graph which presents to bars, one representing the amount of women working in that job in 1914 and the other bar representing the amount of women working in that job in 1918. The types of employment included are Transport, Agriculture, Industry, Commerce, Civil Service, Hotels/Inns and Domestic Service).
Ife Otukoya Period 5 Women in the Civil War: Positive or Negative A lot of historians would say that the Civil War took a negative toll on the country, but I say that it was positive. I say it’s positive because first, slaves were allowed to vote, and women’s rights were extended. They were able to take on the jobs and responsibilities once thought to be a man’s. In the present day women are out numbering men in the nursing profession. Before the civil war it was mostly men who were nurses, but since a lot of them went to war, the ladies took on the job.
Women wanted the same working rights as men, and they fought hard for it. Suffragettes stoped their campaign of violence and supported the government and its war effort in every way. The work done by women in the First World War was to be vital for Britain's war effort. Even though women gained the right to vote shortly after the war, its argued that the war wasn’t really the cause of giving women this right. After all, in countries such as New Zealand (1893), Australia (1901), Finland (1906) or Norway (1913) women got the vote before the war began, whereas others such as Denmark (1915), Iceland (1915), Holland (1917) or Sweden (1919) gave it to women during the war without being involved in it.