"Since the outbreak of war the women of Britain have shown themselves ready and anxious to undertake every form of work where their services could be accepted, and this book is intended not only to indicate that women have shown themselves capable of succesfully replacing the stronger sex in practically every calling, but is offered also as a tribute to their effective contribution to the Empire in its hour of need".
General Sir Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready, Adjutant-General to the Forces introduction to Women's War Work 1916.
'Women's War Work' can be downloaded here (the book is in the public domain) as a scanned PDF and is a fascinating insight into the official drive to recruit women. As a resource for teachers it represents an excellent contemporary source.
During the first world war, many women were recuited to help on the home front in areas such as nursing, coal mining, farming, and textiles. The largest area in which women were recruited however was munitions manufacturing, making bombs, bullets and shells to be sent to the front lines in mainland Europe.
Many women joined the effort in part as a patriotic act, to help their country and to support their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who may have been sent to war. However there was a significant number who joined up to receive nearly double the wage they might expect in other occupations. Even though womens wages were higher in these occupations, they were still less than a man would earn for doing the same job.
Although there are examples of women who fought during the war, such as Flora Sandes (who embarked as a nurse to Serbia but ended up fighting), most women worked in support of the war. As many as 80,000 women joined up to serve in non-combatant roles during the war. Some women went to parliament to ask for the right to bear arms and fight but were refused. Nurses saw service close to the front lines and many of them witnessed the horrors of the front through their service.
Nurses In action
Many of the factories women worked in were incredibly dangerous and hazardous places. They were often loud and full of toxic, poisonous chemicals which were harmful to breathe in by the workers. Munitions factories were particularly dangerous not only due to the hazardous chemicals used in creating the explosives, but also due to the threat of accidental explosion of the devices. 'Canary girls' was a common term for women working in munitions factories, as their skin turned yellow from the sulphur in explosives. This affected not only the women working in the factories, but those at home as chemicals would be transferred from the womens clothes and bodies and passed on to their families.
Women workers posing for a photo in a munitions factory making shells.
Women were often required to work gruelling 12 hour shifts up to 6 days a week. On top of this they were still responsible for looking after their children and maintaining their household, cooking and cleaning for their families.
Posters were used to recruit women workers, much the same as they were used to recruit men to join the services. The posters used the same tactics, appealing to their sense of patriotism and encouraging women to help and "do their bit".
A recruitment poster aimed at women to encourage
them to help the war effort by building aeroplanes.