“The war revolutionised the industrial position of women – it found them serfs and left them free.”
– Millicent Fawcett president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies from 1897 to 1918
Women Workers in WW1
c. 1917 Workers at the National Filling Factory in Chilwell
Women Workers filled the void left by men called up to fight in World War 1. Working in jobs that had always been held by men, many women moved from domestic drudgery into industrial drudgery. They produced munitions, gas masks, planes, ships and worked the land. The British wartime government photographed the women for use in official projects but the photographs on the whole failed to show how hard and dangerous the work actually was. As Alexandra Kuskowski notes:
Women in munitions factories had their skin turn yellow from regular exposure to TNT, earning the nickname “canaries.” Hundreds of women died from overexposure to TNT and other deadly chemicals. On top of the dangerous working conditions, women were also paid significantly less than men in comparable positions. In 1918, women workers on London’s buses, trams and subways organized a strike and managed to win equal pay for equal work.
Nonetheless it still wasn’t real equality. Although in 1918 British women, after a long campaign by the Women’s Suffrage movement before the war, at last got the vote. But only if they were over the age of 30 years.
British women cleaning a locomotive in the Midlands
British women working in a chemical laboratory near Manchester
British women in a glass factory cutting shop near Birmingham
British women aeroplane workers near Birmingham welding frame tugs for planes
Railway workers unloading goods from train
British women working in a lace factory in Nottingham
Woman driving O.E.T. crane
British women millers in Lancashire packing flour
British women rubber workers in Lancashire making mouth-pieces for gas masks
British women asbestos workers in factory in Lancashire
The Royal tour in the North Eastern Countries – The King chatting to some of the munitions girls
W.R.N.S. instructor at respirator and mask drill for military recruits
View of canteen at munitions factory
Women operating radial drills, drilling valve covers and strainer plates for weed boxes for marine engines
British women Glass Workers
Woman driving 20 ton O.E.T. crane
With the British Navy in wartime – Working a machine to extract the metal from the rubbish
British rubber workers in Lancashire spreading machine for coaling canvas for tire making
WOMEN’S FARM COMPETITIONS AT THE WHITEHALL ESTATE
Sorting pan coke and ashes in London gas works
Women workers in a British shell factory
Discharging Oxide Purifiers at a London gas works
Removing grit supports in Oxide purifiers at a London gas works
WOMEN’S FARM COMPETITIONS AT THE WHITEHALL ESTATE, BISHOP’S STORTFORD
Women and girls doing rough work in the yards
Women thatchers at work
Whealing spent oxide on floor at a London gas works
The bag fillers assisting the bag on to the carrier’s back
Coke heavers
Workers in a dressing shop.
A London’s gas works
A London gas works
Women taping planes
British women in Nottingham tannery drawing skins from the lime pit
All images of Women in World War 1 : University of British Colombia
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