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

As warfare broke out in 1914 just about 1/3 of wowork force were in some type of gainful employwork forcet. The legal age of this was domestic service or secretarial work and most race accepted, there was no place for women in manual labour e. g. dock-labouring, archeological site or road -digging. A womans role was precise much as the home conductr. They were regarded as the weaker sex and the sex that had fewer rights than men. Decent women were expected to squelch at home and rear the children of the family. They had to obey their husbands. Britains leisure class was unplowed in comfort by an army of domestic servants.A macroscopic land receiveer with a wife, two children and a 62-roomed house n the wolfram End required an indoor staff of 36. Some of the servants accompanied the family to its other homes the country house, the seaside villa, the shooting box in Scotland each of which likewise had its proclaim separate staff, containing many women. The working day cou ld be a strong 17 hours long. The most important womanly servant of the household was the housekeeper, know by the title of Mrs, she commanded a platoon of womanly domestics like ladys maid, housemaids, kitchen maids and the scullion who washed the dishes. speed class women were not expected to work. They therefore were involved in bounty work and voluntary work also they were heavily involved with the suffragettes. 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 room income, which oft wasnt enough. Workrooms were often crowded, dirty, ill lit, ill venti tardilyd 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 get about 65 per cent of the male wage. The employment of slender errand girls, normally only 14 years of age was common. Their work was very varied running errands, matching materials, and taking out parcels, cleaning the workrooms, and often also helping in the work of the house. To be running more or less 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 further there were plenty of girls to take their place, so they would not give in. some others were employed to work on the surface of coal mines or on fish 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 modelling welding was perceived as a skilled job when men did it but when women became welders during the First World 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 opinion of men was that they were not ingenious enough and too weak emotionally therefore un adequate to(p) to fare 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 able to women, although they were restricted in taking degrees in eit her Oxford or Cambridge. almost women lacked such opportunities. Women mainly moved into the low-skill, low-pay sweat shop sector as they were denied entree to the new technologies.Female factory workers were generally worse treated than men in pay, training 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 rates 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 social commentator and reformer, S.Rowntree, had argued that i1 a week was necessary in order to live above want but few women received this amount. In J. M Barries comedy What eer Woman Knows (1908), John Shand, the railwayman turned MP, owes his succ ess as a debater to his wife Maggie, who has transformed his boring speeches when she typed them up. Women had achieved some degree of matrimonial 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 winning the vote.