mobilisation and enfranchisement. Many women stepped into the role of head of
households and as the War had caused a mass exodus of working-age men, some could step into employment beyond domestic service. 13 As Jane Cox, a textiles
worker, discussed in an oral history interview, the war effort provided working-class
women with the first experience of economic liberation, they ‘started earning their own money,’ rather than being dependent on their husbands. 14 The excitement that
War brought underlies her memories. This was seen as a time of opportunity. As
Gail Braybon argued, there was an expectation that War would cause grand societal changes. 15 Yet as both Cox and Lilian Gertrude Wolfe believed the War did not change society. 16 17 Increased opportunity for social and economic liberation did not
equate to equal political rights. Working-class women did not experience
transformative societal changes. They remained disenfranchised and in poor living
conditions. Not until 1928 would these working-class women be able to exercise their
right to vote. Although Arthur Marwick, a leading modernisation thesis proponent,
negated the effects of the ‘Edwardian class structure’ on surmising women’s
experiences, this interpretation still fails to comprehend the difficulties women faced. 18 Even with the granting of suffrage, working-class women remained isolated
from the political system, hence the necessity for women’s agency via the suffrage
movement. Oral histories illuminate the necessity of the growth of feminist and
cultural history, focusing on the broader context within which mobilisation and
suffrage occurred. Which spans beyond the period of the First World War, thus the
two cannot be so definitively linked.
However, suffrage remained unattainable to the women most important to the
war effort. The different experiences of mobilisation caused by class were
epitomised by the regular jobs that working-class women tended to take up and the
roles of welfare supervisors that middle or upper-class women tended to fulfil. The
13 Susan R. Grayzel, Women and the First World War (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2002), p. 29. 14 Jane Cox, interviewed by Margaret A Brooks about her experiences of the First World War, 18 July and 20 October 1975. 15 Gail Braybon, ‘Women’s Public Image During the War’, in Women Workers in the First World War (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012), pp. 154 – 72 (p. 154). 16 Cox. 17 Lilian Gertrude Wolfe, interviewed by Margaret A Brooks about her experiences of the First World War, 27 February 1974. 18 Arthur Marwick, ‘New Women: 1915 - 1916’, in The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), pp. 87 – 112 (p. 93).
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