Women's Role In World War I

Women’s role in the war was more than just supporting their husbands. When men went to war they left their jobs and the women took over them. With the women taking the men’s jobs, women started striking because they weren't getting paid as much as the men were for doing the same job. Also women started going into war and helping in the hospitals and getting supplies. When war broke out women had a huge impact on taking over the jobs the men had. Women worked in factories, they did the farm work, they were conductors for busses, some were even police and firefighters.These are just a few of the jobs they took over. Factories were producing poison and dangerous weapons, such as shells and TNT that was named canaries. Women had to work around
Even though people were worried about this it didn’t happen. After the war was over the men did get their jobs back. When this happened, women had to either work with the men but for even lower amounts of money or they had to leave and give the soldiers their jobs back. Since women didn’t want to work for a lower amount of money than the men, they went on strike. These women went on strike to get the same amount of men the men did when they worked. The first equal right strike in the United Kingdom happened in London the year of 1918. The strike spread to other parts of the south east. The reason women weren’t getting paid as much as because of they didn’t have as much strength as men and because of their “special” health concerns. In World War 1 women’s employment rate went up almost 20%. The employment rate for married women went up a lot as well. Over 800 women went on strike because Cradley Heath would not give the amount of money for the new minimum wage to women. Strikers would strike outside of churches congregations and football fields. After a month later, about 60% of business were paying the new minimum wage. The day of October 22nd, women won the strike for minimum wage and it had