Before the war, the most common employment for a woman was as a domestic servant. However, women were also employed in what were seen to be suitable occupations e.g. teaching, nursing, office work.

1. The Impact of the
War on Women
By Mr. John Carlo
Castillo-Cabalit
AB History

2. Outline:
I. Introduction
A. Historical Background
a. Women’s role prior to World War 1
b. Women and WW1- Women at the
Front
II. Impact of the War on Women
A. Woman Campaigning for Right to Vote
a. Right to Work
i. Christabel Pankhurst

3. B. Shell Shortage Crisis in 1915
b. Treasury Agreements
C. Compulsory Enrolment for National
Service.
III. After the War
IV. Conclusion

5. Continue....
When war broke out in August 1914,
thousands of women were sacked
from jobs in dressmaking, millinery
and jewellery making. They needed
work – and they wanted to help the
war effort.

6. B. Women and WW1-Women at the Front
During the war women were to be found
mostly at the home front while a
minority went close to the actual
fronts where the war was being
fought, some even into combat.

7. B. Women and WW!-Women at the Front
Women were assumed to be far more helpless than
they were and were also forced to assume a
helplessness they didn't feel. Besides, in plain
military terms, there's more sense in sending to
the front the citizens physically most fit of any
sex rather than only men. There are abundant
comments about the physical unfitness of the
last batches of conscripts, many of them
working-class men with bodies badly affected by
the horrors of industrial work or youths with
very little capacity to endure the hardships of
the front. Meanwhile, thousands of women as
capable as Sandes and Bochkareva were kept
away from the front out of sheer sexist

8. II. Impact of the War on Women
A. Woman campaigning for right to
vote
Suffragettes stopped all militant
action in order to support the war
effort.

9. a. Right to Work:
At first, there was much trade union
opposition and the employment of
women had not increased
significantly before the summer of
1915. In July 1915, a ‘Right to
Work’ ,march was organised by a
leading suffragette, Christabel
Pankhurst.

10. B. Shell Shortage Crisis in 1915
The shell shortage crisis in 1915
began to change the situation.
Women were taken on to work in
munitions factories. The government
did a deal with the trade unions,
known as the Treasury Agreements.
The unions agreed to accept female
labour in place of men ‘for the
duration of the war’.

11. C. Compulsory enrolment for national
service
The introduction of conscription in
1916 led to an increase in the
number of women employed in all
sectors of the economy.

12. Key points...
Many women were paid good wages,
especially in munitions factories, but
in most cases they were paid lower
rates than men.
Improved wages did permit greater
independence for some women.

13. Key points...
Women became more visible in the
world of work. They were seen to be
doing important jobs.

14. Key points
The armed forces also employed
women, but the jobs were mainly of
a clerical and domestic nature.

16. Key points
Women were in great demand for
the ‘caring’ side of employment and
became nurses in the First Aid
Nursing Yeomanry, and drivers and
clerks in Voluntary Aid Detachments.
VAD’s

17. III. After the War
1 Women were expected to give way to men returning
from the forces and return to pre-war ‘women’s
work’.
2 The assumption that ‘a woman’s place is in the home’
returned.
3 The percentage of women at work returned to pre-
war levels.
4 More women than before worked in offices.

18. After the War
5 Shorter skirts and hair became fashionable.
6 Women went out with men without a chaperone.
7 Women smoked and wore make-up in public for the
first time.
8 In 1919: being female or married was no longer
allowed to disqualify someone from holding a job in
the professions or civil service.
•

19. IV. Conclusion
Women's contribution to both wars was
significant; though the attitudes
towards their contribution were
typically paternalistic.

20. IV. Conclusion
Still today, when women are employed
as professional soldiers by a number
of state armed forces, we tend to
believe that war is man's exclusive
business. This is plainly untrue, and
has always been so, since war can't
be reduced just to combat and,
anyway, combat is no longer the sole
province of man.

21. IV. Conclusion
The First World War is of capital importance
to understand the connection between women
and war in the wide sense of the word - not
just war as combat - because it intersects
with crucial developments in the history of
feminism. Since women (and I'll refer here
mainly to British women) got the vote in
1918, though limited to those over 30,
apparently as a way to thank them for their
immense contribution to the war effort,
WWI is understood to have been a positive
event for feminism, with all the
contradictions this entails.