What did women do on the home front in World War One?

How did women's jobs change?

An illustration of working women from offices, farms and others during World War One

Life for women changed a lot because men were away at war.

Many women took paid jobs outside the home for the first time.

By 1918 there were five million women working in Britain.

The money they earned helped the family's budget and they made new friends in the factory, office or shop.

Watch: What jobs did women do at home?

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Watch our video to find out more about women's work on the home front.

What jobs did women do in towns?

Lots of women took jobs in shops and offices.

Some women were so good at typing that they became known as 'typewriters' - named after the machines they used!

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Image caption,
Clerks dealt with letters, filing and typing
As more women started to work in offices, they were trained in tasks like bookkeeping (keeping a log of money) and working a switchboard (a telephone control centre).
Image caption,
Shop workers packed groceries and dressed shop windows
Their jobs involved serving customers, so women had to be neat for work and were usually not allowed to wear jewellery.
Image caption,
Training schools helped to prepare women for shop work
New recruits would learn skills such as cutting meat, balancing scales and testing the freshness of eggs. They attended lessons about the products being sold.

What was the Land Army?

Women worked in all areas of farming, including operating ploughs, a large machine which prepares soil for growing crops.

Food production became very important due to shortages because of the war.

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Image source, © IWM Q 30687
Image caption,
Women's Land Army Forage Corps
By 1917 more and more women were working on farms as 'Land Girls'. In the Forage Corps women fed and stacked hay bales on British farms.
Image source, © IWM Q 30718
Image caption,
Women's Land Army Forestry Corps
Members chopped, sawed and transported wood. They were sometimes known as 'Lumber Jills.' The wood was used for building ships and supporting mine roofs.
Image source, © IWM Q 30662
Image caption,
Women looked after animals
They also grew vegetables to provide food for the nation.

What jobs did women do to help the war effort?

Like the women who went to help on the front line, women in Britain also worked for the war effort.

The war created lots of new jobs. Other jobs focused on protecting people.

Many women were brought in to build munitions (weapons). By 1918 nearly a million women had jobs linked to munitions.

They worked with explosives which made some workers ill or their skin turn yellow.

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Image source, © IWM Q 108408
Image caption,
Women worked in munition factories all over the country
One of their jobs was cutting copper bands on shell cases and oiling the machinery.
Image source, © IWM Q 108429
Image caption,
They worked long days and did the same tasks over and over
The work was extremely dangerous. Tasks included making hand grenades as shown in this photograph taken in around 1917.

Unequal pay and voting rights

A large carriage full of suffragettes campaigning in London in 1910 — Image caption,
The Suffragettes were one of many groups asking for better rights.

Despite doing the same jobs as men, women were paid less.

Shop workers were paid around half as much. Teachers earned less than 80 per cent of a man's salary.

Only British men were allowed to vote to choose a government.

This was unfair and lots of women protested to demand better rights.

Women's rights

In 1918 women with property over the age of 30 were given the right to vote.

In 1928 this was extended to all women over the age of 21.

Life on the home front during the war let women prove they could work as hard as men in a wide range of jobs. They deserved the same rights.

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