THE CHANGING ROLE AND STATUS OF WOMEN 1910-1979
1910s:
The First World War strongly influenced the development of women's rights in 20th-century Britain. It opened up new employment opportunities for many women, who replaced the millions of men sent to fight on the Western Front and elsewhere. Jobs in munitions factories, transport and other key areas that had been dominated by men now became increasingly feminised, and under the Representation of the People Act (1918) the franchise was for the first time extended to women. To equate the First World War with the 'liberation' of women in Britain, however, is far too simplistic. The 'democratic' franchise of 1918 in fact gave the vote only to women over the age of 30. The Education Act of 1918 widened opportunities for girls and women. After this act was passed all children received education until they were 14. Perhaps even greater change of role brought about by the First World War was the extension of votes for some women and all men over 21. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 although it did not give women the same rights as men was reward for their wartime efforts. Ironically it was this contribution to the war effort rather than political action as described later allowed women to participate in democracy. The apparent advances made in the workplace were often illusory. Many women lost their jobs when demobilised soldiers returned to Britain in late 1918 and in 1919. Women continued to face barriers to equal pay and to equal access to certain professions, despite the Sex Disqualification Removal Act of 1919 - which, in theory at least, made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their gender.
Key Dates:
1918 / Representation of the People Act gives women aged over 30 the vote1918 / Education Act gives all children an education until the age of 14
1920s
A later Representation of the People Act in 1928 at last gave women exactly the same voting rights as men. The nineteen twenties saw women in the ascendant. New fashions liberated them from corsets and long skirts. The acceptability of single women going to work and having their own money to spend saw a boom in dance halls, cinemas and off the peg-clothes. The full vote was finally won in 1928, when women were enfranchised on equal terms with men. Electricity was beginning to ease the burden in the home and the first birth control clinics meant that married women could at last have some control over their fertility. The handful of women MPs helped push through legislation giving women equality in property rights, divorce and the guardianship of children. Following the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1921, the first professional women qualified as lawyers, civil servants, vets and engineers and the new world of broadcasting gave women a voice on the airwaves. This was the decade that saw the first woman cabinet minister and the launch of the campaign for women priests.
Key Dates:
1920 / Oxford University opens its degrees to women.1921 / Unemployment benefit was extended to include allowances for wives.
1921 / The Six Point Group is founded by Lady Rhondda (1883-1958), to push for women's equality on six points: political, occupational, moral, social, economic and legal.
1923 / The Matrimonial Causes Bill is passed. For the first time a wife is eligible to petition for divorce on account of her husband's adultery.
1928 / The Representations of the People Act gave women the same voting rights as men.
1930s
Although women quickly gained election to the Commons there were only a handful at any given time throughout the rest of the period. Earlier women MPs of note included the first woman cabinet minister Margaret Bondfield and the independent Eleanor Rathbone who heavily influenced the introduction of family allowance. The interwar period was marked by an increase in the amount of 'women's legislation' passed by Parliament. It also saw Britain's first female MPs. A huge number of organisations now represented women's interests. These included the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (the new name given to the NUWSS in 1919), women's trade unions and the Women's Institute.Yet on the eve of the Second World War the women's movement seemed to be in decline. Both economic depression and the achievement of equal franchise in 1928 contributed to this development. A revived 'cult of domesticity', associated with mass circulation magazines such as Woman, emerged during the 1930s. Marriage rates rose rapidly. After the euphoria of the twenties, the thirties were a less vibrant decade for women. The Depression meant that they were increasingly encouraged back into the home as jobs for men became scarce. The BBC, which had prided itself on being a modern organisation, introduced a marriage bar in 1932, bringing it in line with the teaching profession and the civil service. This meant that married women were no longer employed and if you were to marry, you had to resign. In the world of the arts, however, women were making better progress. Ballet was thriving under Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois, and the singers Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday were making their debuts. The decade also saw Britain 's first woman police inspector, the first Oxbridge professor and the first woman commissioner of prisons. A new hero was born when Amy Johnson successfully flew to Australia in 1930. After taking off from Croydon airport, the world held its breath as she made an emergency landing in the desert in a sand storm, crashed her plane in India and got lost amongst tribes people on a Pacific island. When she finally touched down in Australia, she was an international celebrity.
Key Dates:
1932 / In line with the teaching profession and the civil service, the BBC introduces a marriage bar, and no longer employs married women, except under exceptional circumstances.1937 / The Matrimonial Causes Act extends the grounds on which divorce could be granted to include wilful desertion, cruelty, incurable insanity and habitual drunkenness.
1940s:
As was the case during the First World War, women's experiences during the Second World War (1939-45) were mixed. In many ways they played a more direct and active role in Britain's war effort - both its sufferings and its successes - than women had done during the Great War. Women constituted 63,000 of the 130,000 civilians killed during the Blitz. They also contributed in far greater numbers to wartime labour, particularly after the introduction of industrial conscription in 1941. By 1943 there were 7.25 million women employed in industry, agriculture, the armed forces and civil defence organisations. Many more of these women survived the postwar return of men to the workplace than had been the case after the First World War. The Second World War, like the first, had a dramatic effect on women's lives. In 1941, all single women aged between twenty and forty were obliged to register for war work. This was later extended to include women up to the age of fifty and married women, though there were exemptions for pregnant women and mothers of young children. As in the First World War, women were recruited into government departments and key occupations like nursing, train driving and civil defence. Hundreds of nurseries were set up with the more enlightened workplaces giving women time off for shopping or to collect children from school. The women's services were run more professionally, with women taking on a greater range of military tasks. They were augmented by the Women's Land Army, under Lady Denman, the Women's Voluntary Service for Civil Defence under Lady Reading and many smaller groups such as the Women's Timber Corps and the Air Transport Auxilliary. After the war, the introduction of family allowances and the National Health Service undoubtedly improved women's lot but there was also frustration as they were pushed back into the home. Most went willingly, relieved to re-build their families. In 1948, Cambridge University finally bowed to public pressure and admitted women to its degrees. In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published "The Second Sex".In political terms, the war helped to revive the women's movement. In particular, the growing consensus in favour of social and welfare reform - as proposed by the Beveridge Report (1942) and the Education Bill (1944) - allowed organisations such as the Equal Pay Campaign Committee to remind the public of ongoing inequalities in the treatment of men and women. No great reforms were enacted between 1939 and 1945 to give an institutional basis to the idea of equality in the workplace. Politicians used delaying tactics to sink the equal pay campaign. Old prejudices about women's working capabilities were alive and well, particularly in the armed forces - home to 470,000 servicewomen during the war. Even progressive measures such as the Beveridge Report were by no means feminist in their outlook. Beveridge himself believed that welfare reform would encourage motherhood, thereby increasing the size of Britain's population. As Mass Observation reports and other wartime surveys illustrate, women generally found the Second World War a more dispiriting experience than men did. Women workers often viewed their jobs in a negative light, particularly after the introduction of conscription. Full-time housewives, of whom there were almost 9 million in wartime Britain, were troubled by the disruption to family life caused by the war, as well as everyday inconveniences such as food queues and the blackout.
Key Dates:
1941 / The National Service Act is passed introducing conscription for women. All unmarried women aged between the ages of 20 and 30 were called up for war work.This was later extended to include women aged up to 43 and to married women, though pregnant women and those with young children could be exempt.1941 / The Trades Union Congress pledges itself to the principle of equal pay.
1944 / The Butler Education Act raises the school leaving age to 15 and lifts the ban on women teachers marrying.
1945 / Family Allowance is introduced after a prolonged campaign.
1946 / The Royal Commission on Equal Pay recommends teachers, local government officers and civil servants should all receive equal pay.
1950s:
The1950s were very much the decade of domesticity. Most women's lives revolved around their homes and families as they took advantage of new technologies and the consumer boom. In the world of work, women teachers and civil servants won the principal of equal pay and the decade saw Britain 's first woman bank manager, TV newsreader and managing director of an advertising agency. In the world of work, women teachers and civil servants won the principal of equal pay and the decade saw Britain 's first woman bank manager, TV newsreader and managing director of an advertising agency. Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch made their debuts as novelists and at King's College London, research carried out by Rosalind Franklin was key to the discovery of DNA.
1960s:
The Swinging Sixties saw the re-kindling of female radicalism. In the United States , Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique and founded the National Organisation of Women. In Britain, a burgeoning women's liberation movement met for the first time. This was the decade that saw the first sales of the contraceptive pill and a law that legalised abortion.
Key Dates:
1961 / Thecontraceptive pill goes on sale for the first time in the UK.1964 / The Married Women's Property Act entitles a woman to keep half of any savings she had made from the allowance she was given by her husband.
1967 / Under the new Abortion Law, abortion in Britain under medical supervision is made legal within certain criteria.
1968 / 850 women machinists at Fords of Dagenham go on strike for equal pay. This paves the way for the Equal Pay act two years later.
1970s
This was the decade of feminism. Landmark books like Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and Kate Millet's Sexual Politics sold in their millions. Magazines like Ms and Spare Rib increasingly found their way into women's homes and the feminist publishers Virago was launched. Nawal El Saadawi published her controversial Women and Sex, the first book to challenge the position of women in Arab society. In 1975 several key pieces of legislation were passed. The Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal to discriminate against women in education, recruitment and advertising. The Employment Protection Act introduced statutory maternity provision and made it illegal to sack a woman because she was pregnant. The Equal Pay Act finally took effect, though it failed to encompass equal pay for work of equal value. Self-help became a by-word as the decade progressed with women increasingly taking control of their lives with women's refuges and rape crisis centres providing a sanctuary for women who faced violence.
Key Dates:
1970 / The Equal Pay Act enshrines in law the principal ofequal pay for women.1971 / On 6 March over 4000 women take part in the first women's liberation march in London.
1974 / Contraception becomes free to women in the UK more on birth control.
1975 / Several key pieces of legislation are passed: The Sex Discrimination Act, which came into force on 29 December 1975. This makes it illegal to discriminate against women in education, recruitment and advertising; the Employment Protection Act introduces statutory maternity provision and makes it illegal to sack a woman because she is pregnant; the Equal Pay Act takes effect.
1976 / The Equal Opportunities Commission comes into effect to oversee the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts.
1976 / The Domestic Violence Act enables women to obtain a court order against their violent husband or partner. The early 1980s saw a proliferation of women-only organisations. This was the decade of power woman with her shoulder pads and high ambitions. Amendments to the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act established the principal of equal pay for work of equal value and allowed women to retire at the same age as men. Yet at the same time, many women began to question whether there was a "glass ceiling" as they failed to reach the top jobs in their companies and organisations.