WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR WOMEN
The war has done already, with us, such great things for women, so
many of them so naturally accepted now, that it is almost difficult to
get back in thought, and realize where we stood when it broke out.
General Smuts, in one of his speeches, said, "Under stress of great
difficulty practically everything breaks down ultimately, and the only
things that survive are really the simple human feelings of loyalty
and comradeship to your fellows, and patriotism, which can stand any
strain and bear you through all difficulty and privation. We soldiers
know the extraordinary value of these simple feelings, how far they go
and what strain they can bear, and how, ultimately, they support the
whole weight of civilization."
In this war our men, in their dealings with us, have got down more and
more to simple fundamental truths and facts--loyalty and comradeship,
founded on our common patriotism. We have got nearer and nearer to the
ideal so many of us long for, equal right to serve and help. The great
fundamental establishment of political rights for women has come with
us. When war broke out, women's suffrage was winning all the time a
greater and greater mass of adherents, a majority of the House was
pledged to vote for it and had been for years, the Trade Unions and
Labour Party stood solid for it, but the motive to act seemed lacking.
War came, and every political party in our country laid aside
political agitation. No party meetings have been held since August,
1914. Suffragists and anti-suffragists did the same. The great body of
constitutional suffragists kept their organization intact but used
it for "sustaining the vital energies of the nation." Relief Work,
Hospital Work and Supplies, Child Welfare, Comforts, Workrooms, help
for professional women, work for Belgian refugees, work in canteens
and huts, work for the Soldiers and Sailors Families' Association,
Schools for Mothers, Girls' Clubs--into everything the Suffrage
societies fling themselves with ardour, zeal and ability. No women
knew better how to organize, no women better how to educate and win
help. They formed an admirable Women's Interests Committee, and looked
after all women's interests excellently.
When the Government issued its first appeal for women volunteers for
munitions and land, etc., it asked the Suffrage societies to circulate
them and to help them to secure the needed labour from women.
As the war went on it became clearer and clearer that the men of
the country saw more and more vividly why suffragists had asked for
votes--and more and more were impressed with the value of their work.
At meetings to do propaganda for Government appeals, when women spoke
on the needs of the country, men everywhere, although it had nothing
to do with the appeal, and had never been mentioned, declared their
conversion to Women's Suffrage in the War.
Women pointed out that they did not want Women's Suffrage as a
reward--but as a simple right. They had not worked for a reward, but
for their country, as any citizen would, but, in our country, the
great converting power is practical proof of value and they had that
overwhelmingly in our work. The Press came out practically solidly for
Women's Suffrage. The work of women was praised in every paper and
one declared, "It cannot be tolerable that we should return to the
old struggle about admitting them to the franchise." Eminent
Anti-Suffragists, inside and outside of the House of Commons, frankly
admitted their conversion. Mr. Asquith, the old enemy of Women's
Suffrage, said in a memorable speech: "They presented to me not only
a reasonable, but, I think, from their point of view, an unanswerable
case.... They say that when the war comes to an end, and when the
process of industrial reconstruction has to be set on foot, have not
the women a special claim to be heard on the many questions which will
arise directly affecting their interests, and possibly meaning for
them large displacement of labour? I cannot think that the House will
deny that, and, I say quite frankly, that I cannot deny that claim."
It was clear the whole question of franchise would need to be gone
into--the soldiers' vote was lost to him under our system when he was
away, and the sailors' redistribution was long overdue, an election,
as things were, would be absolutely unrepresentative. So after several
attempts to deal with the problem in sections, a Committee was set
up under the Speaker of the House of Commons to go into the whole
question of Franchise reform and registration.
The Committee was composed of five Peers and twenty-seven members of
the House of Commons, and started its work in October, 1916, and in
its report, April, 1917, it recommended, by a majority, that a measure
of enfranchisement should be given to women.
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Consultative
Committee, which had been formed in 1916 by the N.U.W.S.S., of
representatives of all constitutional societies, presented various
memorials, notably an admirable memorandum of women's work and opinion
in favour, prepared by the National Union for the Speakers' Conference
during its sittings. After its recommendations while the bill was
being drafted, Mrs. Henry Fawcett, LL.D., the President of the
N.U.W.S.S., headed a deputation received by the Premier, Mr. Lloyd
George, who has always been a supporter of Women's Suffrage. This was
certainly one of the most representative and interesting deputations
that ever went to Downing Street. It numbered over fifty and every
woman in it represented a great section of industrial and war
workers--Miss Mary MacArthur, the Trade Union Leader was there, and
Miss Margaret Bondfield, Mrs. Flora Annie Steele, the authoress; Lady
Forbes Robertson, for actresses; Miss Adelaide Anderson, our
Chief Women Factory Inspector; Mrs. Oliver Strachey, Parliamentary
Honourable Secretary of the National Union, whose work has been
tireless and invaluable in the House; a woman munition worker, a woman
conductor, a railway woman worker, a woman chemist, a woman from a
bank, a clerk, a shipyard worker, a nurse, a V.A.D., an eminent
woman Doctor, a peeress in Lady Cowdray, who has done so much for the
British Women's Hospitals and so many other war objects, and women
representatives of every calling in the nation at peace and war. Mrs.
Pankhurst, who has been very active in war work, was also present on
the Premier's invitation, and Mrs. Fawcett brought a Welshwoman who
made her plea in her own language, the Premier's own, too, and the one
he loves to hear. In his reply, he assured them the bill would contain
a measure of enfranchisement for women as drafted, and he was quite
sure the House would carry it.
The recommendations of the Speakers' Conference were an agreed
compromise, and the Representation of the People Bill, as it was
called on its introduction, has gone through very much on the lines
of the recommendations. It arranges for postal or proxy votes for
the soldier, the sailor and the merchant seaman, it simplifies the
qualifications for men, it retains the University vote for men and
extends it to women, and it enfranchises women of thirty years of age
on a residence qualification, and all wives of voters of the same age.
It disfranchises, for the time, the conscientious objector who will do
no national service. The age at which our men vote is twenty-one. The
higher age of the women was a compromise, which was accepted by all
women's societies and by labour women, though it was not the terms
they stood for--equality.
If we had it on the same terms as men, we should very greatly
outnumber the men. There were over a million more women than men
before the war and a new electorate greater than all the men's numbers
brought in at once was not considered wise. To press for it would have
wrecked our chances.
This measure enfranchises six million women, and about ten million men
are now voters, so we have a very fair proportion.
The women's clause was carried, with only thirty-five dissentients and
later only seventeen voted against it.
In this same bill, with practically no discussion, an amendment was
carried enfranchising the wives of local government electors.
It is difficult to adequately express the confidence, the desire, and
the willingness to co-operate, that there is now between our men and
women.
We know, too, that the great woman's movement of our country, which
has worked to this end for fifty years and numbered our greatest women
among its adherents, has had much to do with the ability of our women
to take the great part they have in this crisis. If women had not
toiled and opened education and opportunities to women, and preached
the necessity of full service, we could not have done it.
One great thing the war has done for our women is to draw us all
closely together--in common sorrows, hopes and fears, we find how much
we are one and in so much of our work women of every rank of life
are together. We had that union before in many ways, but never so
completely as now. _Punch_ has a delightful picture that summed up
how we are mixed in soldier's canteens, and huts and buffets, and
Hospitals, which show a little Londoner saying to a meek member of the
aristocracy "washing up," "Nar, then, Lady Halexandra, 'urry up with
them plaites," and we have an amusing little play of the same kind.
The society girl who washes down the Hospital steps, and washes up for
hours, and carries meals up and down stairs in her work, week after
week, and month after month, and year after year, in our Hospitals,
knows what work is now, and the soldier who is served, and the
soldier's sister and wife, learns something, too, about her that is
worth learning.
We have also learned a great deal in our welfare work, and the welfare
supervisors and the workers both have benefited, and the heads of
the innumerable hostels, which we have built everywhere for our
girls--dozens in our new Government-built munition cities, have been
of very real help and service to the girls. A tactful, sensible,
educated woman has a great deal to give that helps the younger girl,
and can look after and advise her as to health, work, leisure and
amusements in a way that leaves real lasting benefit.
In the munition works, well educated women, women with plenty of
money, women who never worked before, work year after year beside the
working girl. Just at first some of the working girls were not quite
sure of her, but it is all right long, long ago, and they mutually
admire each other. The well-off woman works her hours and takes her
pay, and takes it very proudly. I have been told many times by these
women who, for the first time know the joy of earning money, "I never
felt so proud in my life as when I got my first week's money." And the
men in the factories learn a lot, too. "Women have been too much kept
back," was the comment of a foreman in a shell factory to the Chief
Woman Factory Inspector on a visit she was paying to it. The skilled
men, teaching the women, have learned a great deal about them, too,
and have helped the women in so many ways. Men have been amazed at the
ability and power and capacity for work of the women and are, on the
whole, very willing to say so and express their admiration.
One munition girl writes: "The timekeeper, quite a gorgeous gentleman
in uniform, gave us quite a welcome.... The charge-hand of the
Welder's shop helped us to start, and stayed with us most of Friday.
He was most kind, and showed us the best way to tackle each job, did
one for us, and then watched us doing it."
Another says, "Our foreman is a dear old man, so kind and full of fun.
The men welders are awfully good to us."
In considering the practical facts of new opportunities for women, one
thing is clear. Masses of our women took their new work as "temporary
war workers," but as the war has gone on, it has become clearer and
clearer that, in many cases, these tasks are going to be permanently
open to women. One reason is that many of the men will never return to
take up their work again--another, that many of them will never return
to what they did before.
They have been living in the open-air, doing such different things,
such big vistas have opened out that they will never be content to
go back to some of their tasks. There is the other fact that we,
like every other country, will need to repair and renovate so much,
will need to create new and more industries, will need to add to our
productiveness to pay off our burdens of debt, and to carry out our
schemes of reconstruction, so women will still be needed. Our women,
in still greater numbers, will not be able to marry, and the best
thing for any nation and any set of women is to do work, and there
will be plenty of room for all the work our women can do. Many will go
back to home work, of course; there are large numbers who are working
in our country, only while their husbands are away, and when they
return will find their work in their homes again.
We are offering special training opportunities to the young widow of
the soldier or officer.
In special branches of work our opportunities are very much greater
and better. Medicine is one of the professions in which women have
very specially made good. Better training opportunities have opened,
more funds have been raised to enable women of small means to get
medical education, and the Queen herself gave a portion of a gift of
money she received, for this purpose. Most medical appointments are
open to them now and they have been urged by the great medical bodies
to enter for training in still greater numbers in the different
Universities, and have done so.
More research is being done by them in every department. In
professions such as accountancy, architecture, analytical chemistry,
more and more women are entering. In the banking world women have done
very satisfactory work, and one London bank manager, asked to say what
he thought of prospects after the war, says he is very strongly of
opinion it will continue to be a profession for women after the war.
This manager thinks the question of higher administrative posts being
open to women will depend entirely on themselves and their work, and
what they prove capable of achieving and holding, they will certainly
have.
In the war, one profession, in particular, has come nearer to finding
its rightful place than ever before--the teaching profession. Their
salaries which, in too many cases, were disgracefully low, have been
raised. The woman teacher has shown her capacity in new fields of
work in the boys' schools, but it is in another sense that their
profession, both men and women, but very specially the women, have
achieved a very real gain in the war.
The teachers of the country have done a very great deal of war work
of every kind. The National Register of 1915 was largely done by their
labour. The War Savings Associations and Committees owe a great debt
to teachers and inspectors, who are the backbone of the movement,
headmistresses are asked constantly to help in securing trained women,
taught to work in Hospitals on their holidays, on land, in organizing
supplies and comforts in canteens and clubs, and more and more are put
on official Committees in their towns and districts.
It means the teacher is finding the status and position the teachers
in their profession ought to have in their communities, and the war
has done a great deal towards achieving that desirable end, though
there is still a good deal to be done.
In the Government Service there has undoubtedly been great
opportunities for women, especially those of organizing, executive and
secretarial ability--and in many cases the payment in higher posts
is identical for men and women, and higher posts, if they have the
ability, are freely given to women and the whole position of women
in our Civil Service is improved. In the very highest posts, such as
those of Insurance and Feeble-minded Commissioners, etc., women before
the war received the same salaries as men.
The organizing ability and the common sense way in which our women
in voluntary organization, quite rapidly, themselves decided what
organizations were unnecessary and merely duplicating others, and
refused to help them, so that they died out quite quickly, roused
admiration, and the war has educated vast numbers of women in
organization and executive ability. Women who never in their lives
organized anything, and never kept an account properly, are doing
all kinds of useful work. One nice middle-aged lady whose War Savings
Association accounts were being kept wrongly, or rather were not
really being kept at all, when told they must be done fully and
correctly by one of our National Committee representatives, said, "Oh,
but you see, I never did anything but crochet before the war"; but we
have succeeded in making even the crochet ladies keep accounts and do
wonderful things.
In the great world of mechanics and engineering, women are doing
a wonderful amount of work and, there is no doubt, will remain in
certain departments after the war. One danger there is in the women's
attitude--so many of our women have learned one branch of work very
quickly, that there probably will be a tendency to believe that
anything can be learned as easily. There are only certain departments
of mechanics that can be learned in a few months' time, and women will
probably go on doing these. Such work as theirs in optical munitions,
has shown their very special aptitude for it and in law-making,
etc., they will be used more and more. Women have successfully done
tool-setting and can go on with that. The training for civil and
mechanical engineering is long, but there will be, if women are
keen and will train, plenty of opportunity for them in peace-time
occupations in civil, mechanical or electrical branches in connection
with municipal, sanitary and household questions and in laundries,
farms, etc. The women architects and these women could very well
co-operate closely.
Women clerks and secretaries will remain largely after the war.
Fewer men will want these posts as we are convinced there will be big
movements among our men to more active work, to the land and to the
Dominions overseas.
Women on the land will in numbers stay there, and there is a distinct
movement among women with capital to go in for farming, market
gardening, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc., still more.
The war has made more of our fathers and mothers realize the right
of their daughters to education and training, and there are very few
parents in our country now, who think a girl needs to know nothing
very practical, and has no need to go in for a profession. Our women's
colleges have more students than ever and the war has done great
things in breaking down these old conventional ideas. The war, in
fact, has shaken the very foundations of the old Victorian beliefs in
the limited sphere of women to atoms. Our sphere is now very much more
what every human being's sphere is and ought to be--the place and work
in which our capacity, ability or genius finds its fullest vent--and
there is no need to worry about restricting women or anyone else to
particular spheres--if they cannot do it, they cannot fill the sphere,
and that test decides. The dear old Victorian dugouts grow fewer and
fewer in number, but we never must forget that the great powers of
women have not come in a night, miraculously, in the war. They are the
result of long years of patient work before, and we women, who have
had these great opportunities, must see to it that we nobly carry on
the traditions of teaching and training and qualifying ourselves for
service, bequeathed to us from older generations.
One thing, too, despite the war tasks and strain, we have not lost
sight of the fact that the great fundamental tasks of keeping the
house, guarding and seeing to the children must be well done. Just for
a little, some of our tasks of child welfare had fewer workers, but
many of the women realized the value of all these tasks as supreme,
and took up the work freely. Child welfare work in particular the
Suffrage woman organized and worked, Glasgow Suffragists taking on the
visiting of babies, always done there, in a whole ward of the city,
and in other towns they started Day Nurseries.
Lord Rhondda at the Local Government Board instituted Baby week and
we hope to found a Ministry of Health very soon. So in the War we have
realized even more vividly how great and valuable and important these
tasks of women are. A very great amount of work for child welfare has
been done by our women in the war, and our infant death rate is going
still lower.
The war has done a great service in drawing women of all the Allied
Nations together--a service whose greatness and magnitude it is not
easy to fully realize. French and English men and women know so much
more of each other now. Our hospitals in France, our Canteens for
French Soldiers, as well as our own, our women and the French women
working side by side in our army clerical departments and ordnance
depots in France, the Belgians and French who are among us in such
large numbers, make us known to each other. In Serbia we have made
many friends and in Italy and Russia and Romania, all links for the
future, and helps to wider knowledge and understanding. It is on
understanding the hopes of the world rest, and we women have a great
part to play in that.
With America our link has always been very great and all the help,
and gifts, and service America gave us before it entered the war,
have been very precious to us. American women have given Hospitals
and ambulances and everything possible in the way of succour and of
service, and have died with our women in nursing service, as the men
have in our ranks.
Massachusetts sent a nurse to France, Miss Alice Fitzgerald, in memory
of Edith Cavell, which shows the unity of your feeling and ours
on that tragic execution, and her work under our War Office in
Queen Alexandra's Imperial Army Nursing Service with the British
Expeditionary Force, as well as the work of all the American nurses we
have had helping us, is another link in the great chain. Our own great
Commonwealth of Nations are nearer to each other than ever before.
There were even people among us who thought a little as the enemy did
that our Dominions would not stand by us--stupid and blind people.
It is their fight as well as ours--the common fight of all free
peoples, and all our united nations stand together, including those
who only a few years ago were fighting us as brave foes.
We have learned so much in great ways and in small ways, in economies
and in the care of all our resources, too. We women are more careful
in Britain now. We save food, and grow more, and produce more, and
maids and mistresses work together to economize and help. We gather
our waste paper and sell it or give it to the Red Cross for their
funds, give our bottles and our rags, waste no food and save and lend
our money. We could not have been called a thrifty nation before the
war--we are much more thrifty now, in many ways, though there are
still things we could learn.
In the Women's Army and in so much of our work we are learning
discipline and united service--learning what it means to be proud of
your corps and to feel the uniform you wear or the badge is something
you must be worthy of--and it goes back to being worthy of your own
flag and of the ideals for which we all stand in these days.
And the young wives who are married and left behind, who bear their
children with their husbands far away in danger, who have had no real
homes yet, but who wait and hope, they are very wonderful in their
courage and pluck--and, most of all, everywhere, our women, like our
men, wisely refuse to be dreary. There are enough secret dark hours,
but in our work we carry on cheerfully, the women know the soldiers'
slogan, "Cheero," and to Britain and to "somewhere on the fronts," the
same message goes and comes.
Of the great spiritual worths and values, it has brought to women very
much what it has brought to men. All eternal things are more real, all
eternal truths more clearly perceived. When the whole foundations of
life rock under us, in where "there is no change, neither shadow of
turning," the heart rests more surely in these days.
It has brought us agonies and tears, weariness and pain, self-denial
and great sorrows, but it has brought such riches of self-sacrifice,
such service, such love, has shown us such peaks of revelation and
vision to which the soul and the nation can attain, that we count
ourselves rich, though so much has gone.
To think of what we might have been if we had refused to bear our
share--to look back on the evils of luxury and selfishness that were
creeping over us, makes us feel that we may have lost some things,
but "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose
his own soul." And we have saved our soul. The souls of the nations
travail in a new birth through a night of agony and tears. The
purposes being worked out are so great, that it is difficult for us
to see them with our limited human vision, but in great moments of
insight we do see, and having seen, go back to our tasks in the light
of that vision, knowing that though now we fight in dim shadows with
monstrous and awful evils of mankind's creation, the day is coming
nearer and the light will come.
An age is dying and a new age comes, and what it shall be only the men
and women of the world can answer.
RECONSTRUCTION
"The tumult and the shouting dies--
The captains and the Kings depart--
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts; be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget."
--RUDYARD KIPLING.
"We shall not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall our sword sleep in our hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant land."
--W. BLAKE.