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During World War II, the working women of Britain experienced a significant increase in their freedoms and independence, as they assumed the occupations left vacant by the men at war. When the war came to an end there was a dramatic return to domesticity within the family unit. The societal expectations put on postwar women – derived from gender constructs – affected their newly established careers. Many of the women who proved capable of doing a “man’s work” were relieved of their jobs by returning soldiers, and expected to resume their conventional roles as stay at home mothers and wives. In this research paper, I will explore how the roles of British women changed in the workforce after World War II, through a comparison with their roles during the war. This is important for understanding the impact their postwar setbacks in the workforce had on creating the foundations for equal pay and the women’s liberation movements of the 1960s.
When Britain’s able-bodied men were called to war, the highly skilled jobs they traditionally worked needed to be filled, in order to sustain both the economy and war effort. It was that imperative that “in December 1941, women began to be conscripted for war work, when Parliament passed the National Service Act” (“Women at War”: 1). Women were not generally employed in the same sector as men, because the level of difficulty was not considered suitable for them. However, the war took priority over Britain’s gender norms. “All unmarried women
aged 20-30, (later extended to 19-43), now had to either join the armed forces, work in a factory or work on the land with the Women’s Land Army” (“Women at War”: 1). Around 80% of married women worked too (Harris 2011). “State funding was provided to establish about 1345 wartimes nurseries . . . [but] this was always considered a temporary measure . . . [as] a married woman’s place was still considered to be in the home” (World War II: 4). Nevertheless, women were a large proportion of Britain’s workforce during the war – an astonishing 7 million undertook a variety of vital jobs (see fig. 1). They worked “in factories producing munitions, building ships, aeroplanes, in the auxiliary services as air-raid wardens, fire officers and evacuation officers, as drivers of fire engines, trains and trams, as conductores and as nurses” (“World War II”: 2). The most highly employed field was the munitions factories, in which they produced shells and bullets for the war (see fig. 2). “Some munitions workers handled toxic chemicals every day. Those who handled sulphur were nicknamed ‘Canary Girls’, because their skin and hair turned yellow from contact with the chemical” (“Women at War”: 2). One Canary Girl, Eugenie Balderstone, recounts her experience: “I went to work on munitions at British Mark. My job was filling shells with TNT powder. This was,
I thought, my contribution to the war effort . . . I only ever worked on the high explosive (yellow) powder. This stained our hair and skin yellow. It used to burn and sting. We got skin rashes, even though we wore masks and overalls. We worked 12 hour shifts; a fortnight on days then a fortnight on nights” (WW2: 1).
The controversy concerning the poor working conditions of Britain’s women launched the fight for increased union participation and equal pay, since they were in fact doing the same work as their male predecessors. However, only small commissions were made because trade unions “expressed concerns about men’s pay being pushed down and sought assurances that women’s wartime work would only be temporary” (World War II: 1). “Some limited agreement on equal pay was reached . . . when they performed the same job as men had ‘without assistance or supervision’” (World War II: 3). However, women’s work was generally regarded as unskilled, so the average woman received 53% less pay than a man – an aspect that prompted postwar women to push for improved labor rights (Davis).
As World War II came to a halt, so did the progression of women in Britain’s workforce. “Despite the commision, by the end of the war the campaign for equal pay went off the boil as the government and the [Trade Union Commission] concentrated their efforts on persuading women to return to their more traditional spheres of employment – domestic service apparently ranking high on the list of priority jobs” (Davis). Single women were encouraged to stay in the labour market, since Britain was in a period of reconstruction and experiencing labor shortages. However, they were employed under the guise of what the welfare state considered to be “women’s work”. The jobs that fell under this classification were as “nurses, midwives, cleaner and clerical staff . . . banking, textile and light industries . . . secretarial and assembly work” (Post World War II). A sharp contrast from their war occupations.
Married women experienced the most significant setbacks in the postwar workforce. “The Welfare State itself, and in particular the Social Security system, arguably Labour’s finest achievement, was predicated upon the notion that the role of married women in social production was secondary to their domestic responsibilities” (Davis). During the war, British society viewed women’s wartime work as a necessary, but temporary lapse in their traditional beliefs about familial life. So when the war ended, married women were expected to return to their pre-war roles, in both the workforce and home. Various forms of propaganda were used to represent the image that postwar British society wanted to portray of women and domesticity – an inaccurate depiction of how a lot of women felt (see fig. 3). A 1951 report issued by Psychoanalyst John Bowlby to the World Health Organization reinforced this expectation put on women. He argued “that children needed the warm, continuous presence of their mothers in early life to ensure normal psychological development” (Mccarthy 2016: 5). It was believed that the maternal deprivation caused by working mothers created delinquent children. “Bowlby’s ideas informed and lent ‘scientific’ respectability both to government policy on pre-school childcare and to a wider climate of censure towards working mothers with young children” (Mccarthy 2016: 6). The theory was later proven to be false, but its repercussions were already implemented in practice. “The unchallenged acceptance of such views fed the truly reactionary Labour policy of closing the state day nurseries which had been opened to meet the needs of working mothers during the war” (Davis). This discouraged many mothers from participating in the postwar workforce.
For a good portion of the 1950s, a marriage bar was put in place to restrict married women – more specifically, mothers – from working. Women were “routinely sacked when they got pregnant and continued to be paid less than men even if they did the same jobs” (Post World War II: 2). However, despite the opposition they faced, there was an overall increase in women’s employment in the decades following World War II (see Table 1). “The change in women’s work force participation since World War II is almost entirely attributable to the rise in part-time workers” (Wilson 2006: 206). For women, the “solution to the conflict between the demand of paid work and the demands of family and home was the compromise of part-time work” (Davis: 6). It was especially important to married women, whose desire to escape the confines of the home and economic dependency “despite criticism demonstrates the monetary and psychological importance of work for women” (Wilson 2006: 207). Part-time work allowed women to gain autonomy, and have control of the money they earned. However, their wages were often regarded as “extra” – frivolous and affluent – and not integral to the family’s needs. Women argued in defense of part-time work saying “a good mother was not solely one who stayed at the beck and call of her family, but one who nurtured their self-reliance and independence by not being constantly available, as well as by providing goods and pleasures otherwise out of reach of the family” (Wilson 2006: 207). In fact, surveys showed that “of married women who worked found about 15-20 percent of them were the sole or main support of the family” (Wilson 2006: 216).
The advent of women’s part-time work increased the average household income of the British family, and relieved the pressure put on men to be the only source of income – or sole breadwinner (Any source). This encouraged men to be more invested in familial life, and as a result marriages became more egalitarian (McCarthy 2016). The financial autonomy and self-determination that many women experienced through their work led to the “do-it-yourself” ideology of the 1960s. “Organizations like the National Housewives’ Register, the National Childbirth Trust and the Pre-School Playgroups Association emerged from the grass roots in response to the conundrum faced by women who experienced dissatisfaction and frustration in their domestic role” (Abrams 2019: 1). These self-help organizations, as they were called, functioned to increase the intellectual engagement of women in British society – especially, for working women. The National Housewives’ Register was described as “one conduit for the outpouring of frustration . . . amongst women who had formerly been employed in professional and semi-professional roles” (Abrams 2019: 10). Women used the voice these organizations gave them to challenge the patriarchal frameworks of British society, and the notion that a women’s role was purely domestic. The demands for social and economic equality were embodied in the Women’s Liberation Movement that began in the late 1960s, “as a female response to a broad and complex trajectory of social change since the 1940s encompassing women’s education and work” (Abrams 2019: 6).
The momentum of women’s social change overturned much of the gender segregation found in employment throughout the 1950s (Gazeley 2008). During the 1950s, it was easier for British society to see women as consumers and spenders, rather than an economic force that contributed to the livelihood of its family structure (Source). This is because the “welfare system was far cheaper to administer if its benefits were only fully accorded to adult males” (Davis: 5). “The 1950s were a bleak decade for women workers with nothing done to apply the principle of equal pay . . . [and] government and trade unions appeared to accept the dubious argument that the British economy would collapse if women obtained pay parity with men” (Davis: 6). However, the 1960’s brought women’s integration in British society to an all time high, in which they had outlets to implement change – particularly in the workforce. The Ford strike at Dagenham was a critical moment for both women’s mobilization and Britain’s equal pay movement (see fig. 4 & 5). The women machinists employed at Ford Motor company went on strike for 3 weeks and achieved 92% of men’s pay (Source). It was one of the first moments since the war, in which men realized that industries and the economy could not function without them (Post World War II: 8). “Their actions received wide publicity and precipitated wider action in the form of several other equal pay strikes in 1968-69 . . . [and] this mobilisation eventually led to the passage of The Equal Pay Act 1970, the first legislation in the world aimed at ending pay discriminatino between men and women (Post World War II: 8).
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