Download Preparing for Paper 2 of the Higher History Exam

Women !
The Impact of the Great War,
1914-1928
How did the war affect the lives and work of
women in Scotland
• The Great War is often seen as a major
turning point in the role of women in British
society.
• The war opened up jobs to women that
would otherwise have been closed to them
and in 1918 some women were given the
vote in national elections for the first time.
How were women’s roles in
society changing before 1914?
• Male prejudices about a ‘women’s place’
had already begun to weaken.
• Before 1914 some women gained access
to better education and also to some jobs
in the professions.
• New laws had improved the legal rights of
women.
However
• Women still had no vote and those who
campaigned for suffrage (the right to vote)
argued that only by winning the vote could
they significantly improve their lives and
status in society.
In 1897, several local women’s
suffrage Societies united to form
the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies.
These women believed in
moderate, ‘peaceful’ tactics to
win the vote.
• It was mainly middle class property owning
women.
• Later the NUWSS was nicknamed the
suffragists in contrast to the later
suffragettes, the popular name for the
members of the Women’s Social and
political Union.
Emmeline Pankhurst formed the WSPU in
1903. She was frustrated by the lack of
progress achieved by the NUWSS.
• At first the suffragettes demonstrated
peacefully, with rallies and processions,
but by 1910 the suffragette campaign
turned to more violent tactics.
• As a result more and more suffragettes
were arrested and by the summer of 1914
over 1,000 were in prison
When Britain declared war on
Germany in 1914…
• The government released all WSPU
prisoners in order to encourage the
suffragettes to end their campaign.
• In response, the WSPU agreed to stop
their campaign.
• A new pro-war propaganda campaign was
started to encourage men to join the
armed forces and women to demand ‘the
right to serve’.
How did women contribute to
the war effort?
As casualty rates increased on the
battlefield, and as conscription was
introduced to swell the ranks, women were
needed to fill the gaps in the workforce left
by men who went of to fight.
Industries
• Industries that had previously excluded
women now welcomed them.
• Women worked as conductors on trams
and buses.
• As typists and secretaries in offices and
factories.
• 200,000 women found work in government
departments.
Thousands found work on farms
and in the land army.
At the docks
• Even in the Police service.
• Some women, such as nurses, filled more
traditional jobs.
• During the war nurses such as Mairi
Chisholm became important models for
women eager to feel they were ‘doing their
bit’ for the war effort.
Scots girl Mairi Chisholm was
18 in 1914
• She joined an experimental first aid post
just behind the front line in Belgium.
• British authorities would not allow women
so close to the fighting but the Belgian
authorities had no such objections.
By working so close to the front
line the women were in constant
danger
• In March 1918, Chisholm and the other
nurses were affected by poison gas
released against troops and although
Chisholm recovered and returned to her
post, she was never fully fit again.
Mairi Chisholm has only
become well known in Scotland
in recent years.
Much better known is the work
of Elsie Inglis, another Scot who
used her medical skills to assist
in the war effort.
• She was the driving force in the creation of
the Scottish Women’s Hospitals
Committee that sent over 1,000 women
doctors, nurses, orderlies and drivers to
war zones across Europe and the
Balkans.
• Inglis was also involved in setting up four
Scottish Women’s Hospitals, which had
much lower levels of death from disease
than the more traditional military hospitals.
• Having endured terrible conditions,
capture, repatriation, and also fighting
against male-dominated decision making
in the UK, Elsie Inglis eventually died from
cancer in November 1917.