Effects of War Work on Women
The tremendous movement of women into industry and the shifting from
low paid to high paid occupations have given a foundation for a
permanent improvement in the economic status of women, and it is hoped
that their new independence and interest in public affairs will survive
postwar adjustments and remain as a permanent asset. The physical
endurance of many of the women doing war work was a matter of constant
comment. But the increase in the tuberculosis death rates suggests that
the final results of intensive and difficult work have not yet been
determined. However, certain definite effects of war work upon the
health, home life and personality of women and children should be noted.
_Health of Women War Workers_
Definite investigations of the health of women workers were mainly
confined to the munitions industry and were made by the Health of
Munition Workers Committee. The general conclusion of the committee
that by the latter months of 1915 the health of the munition makers,
both men and women, had been injured through overwork, has been much
quoted in the United States:
Taking the country as a whole, the committee are bound to
record their impression that the munition workers in general
have been allowed to reach a state of reduced efficiency
and lowered health which might have been avoided without
reduction of output by attention to the details of daily and
weekly rests.
The committee’s statements about female workers alone were of similar
tenor:
The committee are satisfied that there is a significant
amount of physical disability among women in factories which
calls both for prevention and treatment ... the lifting
and carrying of heavy weights and all sudden, violent, or
physically unsuitable movements in the operation of machines
should, as far as practicable, be avoided.... Prolonged
standing should be restricted to work from which it is
inseparable.
Conditions of work are accepted without question and without
complaint which, immediately detrimental to output, would,
if continued, be ultimately disastrous to health. It is for
the nation to safeguard the devotion of its workers by its
foresight and watchfulness lest irreparable harm be done
body and mind both in this generation and the next.
The committee desire to state that, in their opinion, if
the present long hours, the lack of helpful and sympathetic
oversight, the inability to obtain good, wholesome food, and
the great difficulties of traveling are allowed to continue
it will be impracticable to secure or maintain for an
extended period the high maximum output of which women are
undoubtedly capable.[251]
[251] Great Britain Ministry of Munitions, Health of Munition Workers
Committee, _Memorandum No. 4_, “Employment of Women,” pp. 3, 10.
The conclusions of the factory inspectors in 1915 as to the health of
women munition makers and the results of later investigation under the
auspices of the committee reiterate similar though perhaps slightly
more favorable conclusions. “Reports of inspectors from all parts of
the country” did not show that, as yet, the strain of long hours had
caused “any serious breakdown among the workers,” though there were
“indications of fatigue of a less serious kind.” “Individual workers
confess to feeling tired and to becoming ‘stale’; there are complaints
of bad time keeping, and there is a general tendency towards a
reduction of hours.”[252]
[252] Great Britain Home Office, _Report of the Chief Inspector of
Factories and Workshops for 1915_, pp. 9-10.
Two examinations of the health of large numbers of women munition
workers were made for the Health of Munition Workers Committee,
the first in 1915-1916 and the second in 1917. The first covered
1,326 women in eleven factories and the second 1,183 women in eight
factories. In both examinations nearly 60 per cent of the women were
pronounced “healthy,” about a third showed evidences of slight fatigue
and only the small remainder exhibited signs of “marked fatigue.”[253]
No. of Per cent Per cent
Date Women No. of Per Cent Slightly Markedly
of Study Examined Factories Healthy Fatigued Fatigued
------------------------------------------------------------------
1915-1916 1,326 11 57.5 34.0 8.5
1917 1,183 8 58.5 35.8 5.7
[253] Great Britain Ministry of Munitions, Health of Munition Workers’
Committee, _Final Report_, April, 1918, pp. 21-22.
But these results were not believed to show the full burden of
overwork, since much was unrecognizable and since those worst affected
tended to drop out. The examination could only detect “definite and
obvious fatigue”, amounting almost to sickness. The physical defects
most frequently observed included indigestion, serious dental decay,
nervous irritability, headache, anemia and female disorders. These were
found in about a quarter of the women examined, but it is not stated
whether any of them were supposed to result from the employment.
In the manufacture of fuses, where fine processes involving close
attention were in use, some evidences of eye strain were found. In
one factory 64 per cent of the women in the fuse department had eye
defects, while only 19 per cent of those cutting shells by machine were
similarly affected.[254]
[254] _Ibid._, p. 72.
Another hazard to the overfatigued woman worker is suggested by the
increase in industrial accidents under the stress of long hours. With
a twelve hour day and seventy-five hour week, accidents to women were
two and a half times as frequent in one munition factory as when the
shifts were reduced to ten hours. At another shell factory, when the
working hours of men and women were equalized, lengthening the women’s
week nine and three quarters hours and reducing the men’s nine and a
quarter, the ratio of women’s to men’s accidents rose 19 per cent for
the day shift and 61 per cent for the night shift.
Factors likely to be injurious to health included the frequent twelve
hour shifts and the premium bonus system of payment. There were
numerous complaints of the strain of twelve hour shifts, which usually
entailed ten and a half hours of actual work. Particularly in the case
of married women with children the strain of these hours appeared to
be excessive. The factory inspectors stated in 1915 that especially
at night the twelve hour shift “for any length of time for women
... is undoubtedly trying, and permissible only for war emergencies
with careful make-weights in the way of good food and welfare
arrangements.”[255] The last hours of the twelve hour night shift were
often found to yield but little additional output.
[255] Great Britain Home Office, _Report of the Chief Inspector of
Factories and Workshops for 1915_, p. 14.
Such a judgment is not surprising when the nature of the work
frequently done by women munition makers is considered. To be sure,
such work as filling shells with explosive mixtures was easy and
semi-automatic; but other tasks, for example, examining and gauging,
although light, took much attention and exactness; and some work, such
as turning shells, was comparatively heavy. In lifting shells in and
out of the lathe women were obliged to stretch over the machine, which
involved a considerable strain on the arms with the heavier shells.
For shells over 40-50 pounds, special lifting apparatus was generally
provided, or a male laborer used to lift the shell, but women, in
their haste to proceed, sometimes failed to wait for help. A number of
compensation cases have arisen in which women were seriously injured
by heavy lifting. Yet a woman physician who had medical supervision
of several thousand workers from April, 1916, to November, 1918,
decided that if women were chosen with care they could perform without
risk operations formerly thought beyond their powers. The employes
in question were expected to lift shells up to sixty pounds without
special appliances, but women with pelvic or abdominal defects were not
allowed to enter this work.[256] Ten and a half hours, however, of the
heavier work might prove to be a serious strain.
Moreover, long train journeys were frequently necessary, adding two or
three hours to the time spent away from home. Out of seventy-five women
whose working hours began at 6 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m., none had time
for more than about seven and a half hours’ sleep, and many of them
less than seven hours. Only nineteen of these women were over twenty
years of age.
The premium bonus systems of payment, which became more and more
common, provided increased rates for increased output. In some cases
such systems were said to have proved “a strong temptation to injurious
overexertion.” One example was that of a woman who had “won a ‘shift’
bonus by turning out 132 shells (nose-profiling) in one shift where the
normal output was 100 shells, and had as a result, to remain in bed on
the following day. When it was pointed out to her later that she had
acted foolishly, her reply was that she knew but she ‘wasn’t going to
be beat.’”[257]
[256] Dr. Rhoda H. B. Adamson, “Future Possibilities for the Work of
Women,” _Common Cause_, February 7, 1919, pp. 512-514.
[257] British Association for the Advancement of Science, _Labour,
Finance, and the War_, p. 117.
As counteracting influences to these strains, several factors were
brought forward. Improved pay, and the more nourishing food, better
clothing and living conditions which women workers were often enabled
to secure were mentioned by a number of authorities, including the
Health of Munition Workers Committee, the factory inspectors, the
Association for the Advancement of Science, and the War Cabinet
Committee on women in industry. “The dietary was in most cases more
ample and suitable than the workers had been used to previously,” said
the investigators for the Health of Munition Workers Committee. It
has been observed that many well paid women gave up the supposedly
feminine habit of living on bread and tea for substantial meals of meat
and vegetables. The British Association for the Advancement of Science
noted a higher “physical and mental tone” due to the better standards
permitted by higher wages. The health of low paid workers frequently
improved after entering munitions work.[258] The improvements in
factory sanitation encouraged by the Ministry of Munitions were
likewise helpful in decreasing the risks to health, and the patriotic
spirit of the women also received mention as a partial preventive of
fatigue. “The excitement of doing ‘war work’ and making munitions added
a zest and interest to the work which tended to lessen the fatigue
experienced,” said the physicians who investigated the health of women
munition workers for the Health of Munition Workers Committee.
[258] _Labour, Finance, and the War_, p. 129.
_Effects of Night Work_
It is generally believed that the wisdom of forbidding night work by
women has been clearly demonstrated by experience during the war.
Women, especially married women, did not stand night work as well as
men. The British Association for the Advancement of Science said, in
April, 1916:
It would be well if the experience of those industries in
which night work has become a temporary necessity could be
made widely known. The adverse effects on output, not to
mention the lowering of the health of the workers, should be
a sufficient safeguard against any attempt permanently to
remove the factory act restriction.[259]
[259] _Ibid._, p. 84.
The earlier investigations of the Health of Munition Workers Committee
also confirmed the dangers of night work for women. In one factory
visited at night fatigue was found to prevent many of the women from
getting a meal at the rest period. In another “several women were
lying, during the meal hour, beside their piles of heaped-up work,
while others, later, were asleep beside their machines.”[260]
[260] Great Britain Ministry of Munitions, Health of Munition Workers
Committee, _Memorandum No. 4_, “Employment of Women,” p. 4.
The night work in munition factories had once more emphasized, said the
committee, the “half forgotten facts” about its injurious effects on
women. “In a working class home the difficulty in obtaining rest by day
is great; quiet can not be easily secured; and the mother of a family
can not sleep while the claims of children and home are pressing upon
her; the younger unmarried women are tempted to take the daylight hours
for amusement or shopping; moreover, sleep is often interrupted in
order that the midday meal may be shared.”[261]
[261] Great Britain Ministry of Munitions, Health of Munition Workers
Committee, _Memorandum No. 4_, “Employment of Women,” p. 4.
It must be acknowledged, however, that in its later interim report the
committee was somewhat less unfavorable to night work by women. While
it was found that continuous night work reduced output, a group of
women on alternate weeks of day and night work lost less time than when
on continuous day work. The committee did not, to be sure, consider
night work desirable, but inevitable during the war emergency as long
as production must be increased to its highest point. Because they were
especially likely to do housework during the day and to get very little
sleep, the physicians who examined women munition workers believed
night work to be “too heavy a burden for the average married women.”
Aside from munitions work, the principal evidence as to health
conditions concerned women who were replacing men on outdoor work.
Observers generally expressed surprise at the improvement in health and
appetite which took place, even when the work was heavy. Fresh air,
better wages and better food were believed to account for the gains in
health. Some of the women who became railway porters found the work too
heavy, however, and the nervous strain often proved excessive for women
tram drivers.
A possible decline in health among women workers in general is
suggested by the fact of a 6 per cent increase in the death rate from
tuberculosis among women under forty-five which took place between 1914
and 1916. The Registrar General of Vital Statistics suggested that this
occurred because—
Many thousands of women are now for the first time subjected
to the workshop conditions which have probably tended so
much to maintain the mortality of males at working ages
in recent years. Young women of the most susceptible ages
have thus been subject to risks of infection as well as of
pulmonary disease predisposing to tubercle which they would
have escaped in following their normal occupations; and both
from this cause and from the effect of workshop conditions
on women already infected a number of women have probably
died who would have survived under peace conditions.
Special studies were made by the Health Insurance Medical Research
Committee to test this hypothesis, and they felt, that “further
evidence favoured its accuracy.”[262]
[262] _An Inquiry into the Prevalence and Aetiology of Tuberculosis
among Industrial Workers, with Special Reference to Female Munition
Workers_, p. 4.
Summing up the none too comprehensive evidence on the effects of
four years’ war work on the health of women workers, the War Cabinet
Committee on women in industry did not feel that any extensive
breakdown in health had occurred. Higher real wages often led to better
nutrition and greater comfort, health supervision within the factory
diminished preventable sickness and the nature of the work frequently
stimulated the women’s interest and improved their health and physical
capacity. Yet “it is undoubted that a considerable amount of fatigue
and sickness has occurred.” The rise in the tuberculosis death rate
was held to be significant. The strain was believed greatest among
married women who had to carry the double burden of industrial work
and domestic responsibilities. But on the whole the war demonstrated
that women workers had a greater reserve of energy than they had
been credited with and might safely enter “more varied and arduous
occupations” than had been thought desirable before the war.
_Effects of War Work on Home Life_
Unfortunately it seems probable that conditions of work in the munition
centers have been such as to have a disintegrating effect on home life.
Long working hours, frequent long train trips in addition to those
hours, overcrowded houses, the increased employment of married women
and of women at a distance from their homes have all contributed to
this result.
Two quotations, one from official, the other from labor sources,
illustrate the way in which home life was too often disrupted by
munitions work. According to the first:
While the urgent necessity for women’s work remains, and
while the mother’s time and the time of the elder girls
is largely given to the making of munitions, the home and
the younger children must inevitably suffer. Where home
conditions are bad, as they frequently are, where a long
working day is aggravated by long hours of traveling and
where, in addition, housing accommodation is inadequate,
family life is defaced beyond recognition.... Often far
from offering a rest from the fatigue of the day, the home
conditions offer but fresh aggravation. A day begun at 4 or
even 3.30 a.m. for work at 6 a.m., followed by 14 hours
in the factory and another 2 or 2½ hours on the journey
back, may end at 10 or 10.30 p.m., in a home or lodging
where the prevailing degree of overcrowding precludes all
possibility of comfortable rest. In such conditions of
confusion, pressure and overcrowding, home can have no
existence.[263]
[263] Great Britain Ministry of Munitions, Health of Munition Workers
Committee, _Memorandum No. 4_, “Employment of Women,” p. 5.
Beginning January, 1916, attention to the “welfare” of women workers
outside the factory by the Ministry of Munitions no doubt often
improved the conditions. But early in 1917 a committee of women labor
leaders still felt that home life had in many cases been disorganized.
The result of war conditions has naturally been very marked
in its effects on the health and well being of the women and
children at home. The demand for the work of women ... has
been such that a large number of married women have been
pressed into industrial employment. This means, on the one
hand, a certain neglect of the duty of keeping their homes,
and on the other an extra and heavy burden on their strength
in order to fulfil, however inadequately, some part of these
necessary duties. The children, as well as the women, have
suffered from these results.[264]
[264] Committee of Industrial Women’s Organizations, _The Position of
Women After the War_, p. 9.
To be sure, in the first months of the war the increase in family
income had often meant better food, but even this advantage tended to
disappear with the rapid rise in prices and the actual scarcity of
certain products which occurred from time to time.
_Development of Personality in Women War Workers_
Nevertheless, surprising as it may seem in view of the harm which war
work appears often to have done to home life and sometimes to health,
the development of the woman industrial worker under it may prove to be
one of the most important changes wrought by the conflict.
An interesting article in _The New Statesman_[265] suggested
that “three years of war have been enough to effect an amazing
transformation,” in the average factory woman, especially in the
munition centers. They had gained an independence and an interest in
impersonal affairs seldom found before the war. “They appear more
alert, more critical of the conditions under which they work, more
ready to make a stand against injustice than their prewar selves or
their prototypes. They seem to have wider interests and more corporate
feeling. They have a keener appetite for experience and pleasure and a
tendency quite new to their class to protest against wrongs even before
they become intolerable.” It is “not that an entire class has been
reborn, but that the average factory woman is less helpless, and that
the class is evolving its own leaders.” The writer ascribed the change
in the main to a wider choice of employments, occasional gains in real
wages, praise of the women’s value in war service, and their discontent
with the operation of the munitions acts and other government measures:
[265] June 23, 1917, p. 271.
Again, the brains of the girl worker have been sharpened
by the discontent of her family. She is living in an
atmosphere of discontent with almost all established
things. There is discontent because of the high prices of
milk and meat, because of the scarcity of potatoes, sugar,
butter or margarine, because of the indigestible quality
of the war bread, because of the increased railway fares
and the big profits of many employers and contractors.
There is discontent with the discipline of the army,
with the humiliating position of brothers and husbands
and sweethearts who are privates, with the inadequacy of
army pensions and the delay in giving them. There is rage
against the munitions act, against munitions tribunals and
military tribunals. Every member of the family has his or
her grievance. The father perhaps is a skilled engineer and
is afraid that he is being robbed of the value of his skill
by the process of dilution. The eldest son is in the army,
and perhaps sends home tales of petty tyrannies, and minor,
avoidable irritations. Another son, with incurable physical
defects, is forced into the army and falls dangerously ill.
One daughter goes to another town to work in a munitions
factory, can not get a leaving certificate, and barely
earns enough to pay for board and lodging. Thus the women
of the family are being brought more than ever before into
contact with questions of principles and rights. Questions
of government administration are forced upon their notice.
And in the factory the very men who used to tell them that
trade unionism was no concern of theirs are urging them to
organize for the protection of men workers as well as of
themselves.... The woman worker who was formerly forbidden
by her menfolk to interest herself in public questions
is now assured by politicians, journalists, and the men
who work at her side that her labor is one of the most
vital elements in the national scheme of defence, and that
after the war it is going to be one of the most formidable
problems of reconstruction. Flattery and discontent have
always been the soundest schoolmasters. The factory woman
was a case of arrested development, and the war has given
her a brief opportunity which she is using to come into line
with men of her own class.
Though naturally more guarded in expression, the factory inspectors’
report for 1916 reflected a very similar opinion. The change was
noted principally among women substitutes for men. There, especially
in heavy work, “the acquisition of men’s rates of pay has had a
peculiarly enheartening and stimulating effect.” On the northeast coast
in particular, where prewar opportunities for women had been limited
and their wages very low, their replacement of men in shipbuilding,
munitions, chemicals and iron works had “revolutionized” the position
of the woman worker.
“The national gain appears to me to be overwhelming,” it was stated
further, “as against all risks of loss or disturbance, in the new
self-confidence engendered in women by the very considerable proportion
of cases where they are efficiently doing men’s work at men’s rates of
pay. If this new valuation can be reflected on to their own special
and often highly skilled and nationally indispensable occupations a
renaissance may there be effected of far greater significance even than
the immediate widening of women’s opportunities, great as that is.
Undervaluation there in the past has been the bane of efficiency, and
has meant a heavy loss to the nation.”[266]
[266] Great Britain Home Office, _Report of the Chief Inspector of
Factories and Workshops for 1916_, pp. 6, 7.
The principal effects of the war on the woman worker were strikingly
reviewed by Dr. Marion Phillips, at a “conference of working class
organizations,” held at Bradford in March, 1917. Dr. Phillips held that
the roots of the change lay in the absence of millions of men from
their homes on military service and in the fact that for the first
time the demand for women workers was greater than the supply. As a
result of military demands, wives were deprived of their “dearest and
most intimate counsellors,” their husbands, and were obliged to form
independent judgments, but gained thereby a “new grasp of experience, a
widened outlook and greater confidence in their own judgment.”
The keen demand for women workers resulted in higher wages, greater
opportunities for promotion and more openings in the skilled trades.
Women learned their own value as workers and a growing desire for
equality with male workers was manifested. Higher wages enabled women
workers to obtain more food, and there was a general rise in their
standard of living.
On the other hand, Dr. Phillips notes as unfortunate results on women
workers, the increase in hours, night work and frequent entrance into
unsuitable occupations which overtaxed their strength. There had been a
great influx into industry of women with young children, and a “general
dispersion and scattering of home groups.” Many young women lived in
munition centers in hostels or lodgings away from the restraining
influence of family and friends. It was claimed that this system
encouraged too militaristic a discipline and unfortunate interferences
with the private life of the worker by employers and “welfare
supervisors.” But it is reassuring to see that Dr. Phillips, who is not
likely to underestimate the evils produced by the war, gives as her
final judgment that “the good effects were infinitely more important
than the bad ones.”