Role and Status of Women

Question 1

What was the Act that allowed women over 30 to vote?

Answer 1

1918 - Representation of the People Act

Question 2

What was life like as a working-class woman pre-WWII?

Answer 2

• Mainly worked in service as a maid, cook or cleaner
• Clear gender roles in employment - employers hired women for factory work or service if educated
• 2/3 of all work done by working-class women was done from home

Question 3

What was life like as a middle class woman?

Answer 3

• Suffrage campaign resulted in the ROTPA (1918) was carried out by educated middle-class women
• Universities began to accept women
• Married women, especially middle-class, were expected to stay at home

Question 4

Explain the WWI employment opportunities for women?

Answer 4

• WWI enabled many women to make considerable gains in the workplace as the entire civilian population was mobilised for war work
• 1914 - 200k women in the industrial workforce, by 1918, there were a million in these fields alone
• Wartime employment soon ended when the men came back from war

Question 5

What event took place in 1968 involving women striking? (Explain)

Answer 5

Dagenham Sewing Machinists Strike

• Nearly 200 female workers walked out of the Ford motor company plant in Dagenham, due to their unequal treatment
• Strike led to widespread attention and a potential equal pay legislation in the UK
• Secretary of State of Employment negotiated a pay deal that increased their wages, however a court of inquiry eventually ruled against the women

Question 6

What happened during WWII/ post WWII in terms of women in the workplace?

Answer 6

• Took over the jobs of many men in the work place, often industrial (similar to WWI)
• Soon after the soldiers returned, the government hoped the social upheavals it had caused would not result in social change, and that women would resume their roles at home as wives and mothers
• This showed that women were able to maintain a working life, as well as perform the jobs actually more productively than men
• By 1952 - 1/4 of ,married women still worked - this declined

Question 7

What Act was passed in 1970 involving women in the workplace?

Answer 7

Equal Pay Act

- Gave an individual a right to the same contractual pay and benefits as a person of the opposite sex