WORLD WAR I; WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT.

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Women's War Work: In Maintaining the Industries & Export Trade of the United Kingdom. First edition of this illustrated government publication promoting women's wartime employment. Women's War Work contains a detailed list of several hundred roles left vacant by men that women successfully fulfilled. Several of these are demonstrated by characterful photographs, which show women employed in a range of professions, including the postal service, factories, breweries, and shops. The War Office recruited women into the workplace to maintain productivity, produce munitions, and ensure that as many men as possible were available for the Armed Forces. By July 1916 it was estimated that 750,000 women across Britain had taken up such work, and the War Office produced Women's War Work in September to further increase their numbers. The preface asserts that employers who had women in their workface would "readily admit that the results achieved by the temporary employment of women far exceed their original estimates, and even so are capable of much further extension" (p. 5). Women's contributions to the war effort drastically changed public perception of their capabilities, and helped women over 30 to achieve enfranchisement in 1918.Provenance: from the collection of the suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford.

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