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WHAT DID THE WAR DO FOR US? 100 years ago, 1921, the nation is reeling from WW1. We reflect on this pivotal period in time and what it meant for women. Between 1914 and 1918, the lives of millions of women in Britain were overturned by the first world war. With hundreds of thousands of men away from home, women filled manufacturing and agricultural positions on the home front, finding work opportunities that were not only better paid but also far more rewarding. The number of women in paid employment increased during this period from 4.93 million to 6.19 million. The suffragette movement – which had caused such a stir before the outbreak of war – was diverted by the onset of conflict – and campaigned instead for women’s right to be at the heart of the war. And so by 1917 a move to create a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps was put in place. A short while later it was followed by a Women’s Royal Navy Service and Women’s Air Force. So amid the anguish of loss of the war years there was definitely the exhilaration of emancipation for some women. But the many gains were offset by some depressing losses as
the war drew to a close as, with the declaration of peace, came a predictable backlash. In 1918 women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote and a year later the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their sex. But the very same year, the Restoration of PreWar Practices, meant that men should be given priority in employment and in 1918 750,000 women were made redundant to make way for the demobilised troops. Many women found themselves pushed back into the home and into caring roles for husbands, fathers and brothers maimed and incapacitated by the fighting. Women who resisted were vilified in the press, described as “ruthless self-seekers depriving men and their dependants of their livelihood”; others as “leeches” and “parasites”, determined to “have the time of their lives” at the expense of the returning men and of wider society. Cultural conservatives were keen to see these women
return to more ‘traditional’ areas of work, making women ineligible for unemployment benefit if they refused to take up available jobs in domestic service. Even women’s football was banned. Tolerated by the Football Association (FA) during the war, with the men’s game largely shut down and money being raised for servicemen, women’s football flourished, drawing extraordinary crowds of 53,000 people. But in 1921 the FA banned its members from allowing women’s football to be played at their grounds and forbade its members from acting as referees or linesmen at women’s games, effectively killing the women’s game overnight. Explaining their decision, the FA released a statement in which it concluded that football was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”. Newspapers expressed deep concern at the unsuitable conduct of post-war women, particularly despairing of those that served in uniform ‘In some cases Army life has not been an unmixed blessing, they
