CHAPTER IV
Extension of Employment of Women
The rapid growth in the number of women workers and their entrance into hundreds of occupations formerly carried on by men alone are two of the most striking industrial phenomena of the world war. The decrease in women’s employment which marked the beginning of the war disappeared month by month until the level of July, 1914, was passed in April, 1915. In the next month the Labour Gazette noted that the shortage of male labor was now extending to female and boy labor in many lines. Up to this time recruiting had been comparatively slow. Now came Lord Kitchener’s appeal for “men and still more men,” and as the army grew the women had to fill the depleted ranks of industry.
By August, 1915, the British Association for the Advancement of Science set the increase of employed women over July, 1914, at over 150,000 in industrial lines alone, besides considerable gains in certain nonindustrial occupations.[23] In November of that year the number of women registering at the employment exchanges for the first time exceeded that of men. In April, 1916, by which time the army had been much enlarged and the first conscription act was in effect, the increase had reached 583,000, according to official estimate, and the number of women workers was growing at least five times as fast as before the war. A year later the net gain in the number of women gainfully occupied was 963,000, and in July, 1918, 1,345,000 more women were at work than in July, 1914.[24] In short, in four years of war more than a million and a third additional women entered work outside their homes.
The increase in the number of working women and girls was greatest, perhaps, in the year from April, 1915, to April, 1916, during which period there was an increase of 657,000 in the occupations covered by the Board of Trades reports.[25] During the last year for which figures are available, July, 1917, to July, 1918, the increase was but 277,000. This check in the rate of increase was due probably to a decrease in the demand for the kinds of munitions on which women were most largely employed, an increase in the number of returned soldiers and apparently the depletion of the supply of women readily available for employment.
Among the various occupational groups factory work showed the largest increase, namely, 792,000 women, during the four years ending July, 1918, and agriculture the smallest, 38,000. Commerce was second to industry, with a gain of 429,000, and national and local government third with an increase of 198,000. The number of women workers decreased only in women’s traditional occupation of domestic service, where a decline of 400,000, or nearly 20 per cent, was registered in the four year period.
EXTENSION OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN
DURING FOUR YEARS OF WAR[26]
| Number of Women Working | July, 1914 | July, 1918 | Increase or Decrease |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employers or on own account | 430,000 | 470,000 | +40,000 |
| Industry | 2,178,000 | 2,970,000 | +792,000 |
| Domestic Service | 1,658,000 | 1,258,000 | -400,000 |
| Commerce, etc. | 505,500 | 934,500 | +429,000 |
| National and Local Government, | |||
| including Education | 262,200 | 460,200 | +198,000 |
| Agriculture | 190,000 | 228,000 | +38,000 |
| Hotels, Theaters, etc. | 181,000 | 220,000 | +39,000 |
| Transport | 18,200 | 117,200 | +99,000 |
| Other (including professional) | |||
| Employment and Home Workers | 542,500 | 652,500 | +110,000 |
| Total | 5,966,000 | 7,311,000 | 1,345,000 |
Turning aside from the increases in the total number of women workers to an analysis of changes in the various occupations, a picture is obtained not only of what the army of new workers did, but also of many of the alterations wrought by war on the fabric of British industry.
First Year of War
Within a few weeks after the beginning of the war the government “came into the market as chief buyer,”[27] with large rush orders for the equipment of troops. This involved an “enormously multiplied demand for women’s services” in certain lines, some time before the period of unemployment was over. Increases in the number of women in the leather, engineering and hosiery industries were noted by October, 1914. Before the end of 1914 there was said to be an increase of 100,000 women in the woolen and worsted industry (for khaki, flannel and blankets); in hosiery; in the clothing trade (for military tailoring, fur coat making, caps and shirts); in the boot and shoe trade; and in the making of ammunition, rations and jam, kit bags and haversacks, surgical dressings and bandages and tin boxes. Yet owing to lack of the necessary skill or because they could not be moved to the locality where their services were in demand, thousands of “capable though untrained young women lacked employment when other factories were overwhelmed with their contracts and girls and women strained nearly to the breaking point.”[28] “The relative immobility of labor was never more clearly shown,” says Miss B. L. Hutchins.[29]