An interesting account of the introduction of women into munitions work speaks of the rush of women to register for it in May, 1915, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle, when the public first became aware of the shortage of munitions.[30] But positions were then “exceedingly difficult to obtain” and the use of women became general only in September or later. An official report states that the employment of women on munitions work was considered “tentative and experimental” as late as November and December, 1915.[31] The success of a group of educated women placed as supervisors in an inspection factory, who were trained at Woolwich Arsenal in August, was said to have been the determining factor in leading to the introduction of female labor on a large scale at Woolwich and other government establishments.
During perhaps the first six or eight months of war, however, the additional women factory workers seldom took the places of men, but entered the same occupations in which women had long been employed. The “new demand was to a large extent for that class of goods in the production of which female labour normally predominates.”[32] Women had for many years operated power machines in the clothing trades and had been employed in the making of cartridges and tin boxes, in certain processes in woolen mills, in boot and shoe factories and in the food trades: The needs of the army so far merely provided more opportunities along the usual lines of women’s work.
It was in the spring and early summer of 1915 that instances of the substitution of women for men first began to be noted in industrial employments. The Labour Gazette first mentioned the general subject in June, and in July stated that the movement was “growing.” In the boot and shoe trade in Northamptonshire efforts were being made in May to put women on “purely automatic machines hitherto worked by men.” About this time a violent controversy broke out in the cotton trade regarding the introduction of women as “piecers,” two of whom helped each male spinner. Boys had been used for this purpose, and the union rules forbade the employment of women. Union officials were strong in opposition, saying that the work was unsuitable for women, and that they would undercut the wage rates. An agreement permitting the use of the women was finally made with the union, but even before it was ratified women “piecers” had become increasingly common.
The frequent use of women on work formerly done by men in the munitions branch of the “engineering” (machinists’) trade also dates from about this time. On August 20, 1915, The Engineer, a British trade paper, stated that “during the past few months a great and far reaching change had been effected.... In a certain factory (making projectiles up to 4.5 inch gun size) a new department was started some time ago, the working people being women, with a few expert men as overseers and teachers.... By no means all of the work has been of the repetition type, demanding little or no manipulative ability, but much of it ... taxed the intelligence of the operatives to a high degree. Yet the work turned out has reached a high pitch of excellence.... It may safely be said that women can satisfactorily handle much heavier pieces of metal than had previously been dreamt of.”
Women are said to have been successful in “arduous” processes, such as forging, previously performed by men, and in managing machine tools not even semi-automatic. “It can be stated with absolute truth that with the possible exception of the heaviest tools—and their inability to work even these has yet to be established—women have shown themselves perfectly capable of performing operations which hitherto have been exclusively carried out by men.”
But for industry as a whole the judgment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the extent of substitution during the first year of war is probably accurate. “Broadly speaking,” it was said, “the movement [of women into trades and occupations hitherto reserved wholly or partially to men] has only just begun to assume any appreciable magnitude.... In few industries has the position yet shaped itself.”[33] But in a number of trades, noteworthy among which were leather, engineering, wool, cotton, pottery and printing, women, while not yet undertaking the most highly skilled work, were “undoubtedly slowly undertaking processes that were previously thought just above the line of their strength and skill.”[34]
Very soon after the outbreak of war there began to be an increase in the number of women in certain nonindustrial occupations, most important of which were clerical work, retail trade, and the railway service. Unfortunately no estimate is available of the actual numbers of women so employed in the first year of the war, but the increase must have been considerable. Banks and insurance offices for the first time hired women and girls in any great numbers, mostly for the more routine parts of the work. The civil service took on a good many women in the lower grades of its work, and already complaints were heard of the prejudice which confined trained women to routine work while the “upper division” struggled on understaffed. In the postoffice more women clerks and some postwomen were noted. There was a considerable increase in the number of women in retail trade in various capacities, including shop assistants in dry goods and provision stores, packers and delivery “girls.” In the railway service women were appearing as car cleaners, ticket collectors on the station platforms and in the railway offices. Some cities had hired women as street cleaners and tram car conductors. The exodus of foreign waiters left openings for more waitresses.
In these lines from the first the women took men’s places. And, as the public came into daily contact with women clerks in banks and business offices, postal employes, employes in shops and on delivery vans, tram conductors and ticket collectors, there probably arose an exaggerated idea of the extent to which women did “men’s work” during the first year of war.
The number of women in agriculture, in which the Labour Gazette first noted a shortage of skilled labor in the early months of 1915, is reported to have risen slightly in the spring and summer of 1915. The increases were reported in nearly all the principal branches of the season’s work, first in potato planting, then in turnip hoeing, next in haying and fruit picking and finally in the harvest. In almost every case the additional women were employed on work formerly done by men. But, according to a careful study covering this period:
Most of the press paragraphs referring to the replacement of men by women upon farms have been calculated to give an erroneous impression to the unknowing public. The demand for female labor in agriculture during 1915 was not very great and a large number of girls who offered to take up such work failed to find employment.[35]