.ltWomen War engineers

The Times,
27 March 1917

WORK FOR SHIPS, TANKS, AND AEROPLANES

An exhibition of 550 official photographs of women munition workers was opened yesterday at the Royal Colonial Institute by Mr. Kellaway, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions. The primary object of the exhibition is to give an opportunity to managers and their technical staffs to see to what an extent they can employ women in the industries of the London area; later on the exhibits are to be shown in several provincial towns where munition works are carried on.

The exhibits demonstrate very clearly the skill that women have acquired in engineering trades. A large proportion of the photographs are of women doing work which, before the war was performed by highly-trained men.

It is suggested by the Ministry that the more highly educated class of women would find congenial occupation in munition work. Among the thousands of exhibits are to be seen samples of work connected with engines used in the Tanks, internal combustion engines, aeroplane fittings, machine-guns, belt-filling machines, Lewis guns, optical work, aerial torpedoes, bombs, grenades, body armour, gun carriages, shells and fuses, service rifles, periscopes, magnetos and plugs, air-craft, wire and rolling mills, chemicals, etc.

Mr. KELLAWAY said that before the war there were only three national workshops. Now there were more than 100, and, in addition, 1,703 controlled establishments. Compared with May, 1915, the output to-day of 18-pounder guns had increased 28 times: 4.5 held howitzers, 62 times; medium guns and howitzers, 71 times; and heavy howitzers, above 6in., 423 times. In machine-guns and high explosives the progress had been equally striking. At least 25 per cent of the men who were engaged in the chemical and engineering trades at the outbreak of war had joined the Army, and the results he had indicated were to a great extent due to the women of the country, of whom 700,000 were now employed. That exhibition proved that there was hardly any limit which could be put to the possibilities of women in industry, for some of the most technical processes in engineering were the work of women who 18 months ago knew nothing about engineering. Working men had done everything in their power to enable women to become efficient producers; and it was also right to recognize the patriotism and good sense with which the great majority of the employers had assisted the efforts of the Ministry to realize to the full the possibility of woman-power. No praise could be too high for the patriotism and enthusiasm with which the great body of trade unionists had enabled them to train this vast army of women workers.

He was not going beyond the ascertained facts in saying that but for the work that women had done in the munitions shops the Germans would by now have won the war. A prominent engineer had expressed his firm conviction that, given two more years of war, he would undertake to build a battleship entirely by women's labour.



.lcWomen rushed to work in munitions factories and by 1918 one million were employed as engineers. Women trained in trades previously closed to them, and although equal pay disputes raged throughout the war years, women received far higher wages during this period than ever before.
.llWar and Peace: The home front
The Workplace: In a man's world
The Workplace: Unequal pay
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.lsWR08:WR08_08S
WR02:WR02_04S
WR02:WR02_10S
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