he First World War broke out in Britain on the 4th of August 1914 and lasted until the 11th of November 1918, over the four year duration of the War the lives of women dramatically changed from the traditional views of how women should act into a much more modernized notion of women. When War began, the two spheres perspective of men and women was still widely accepted by the middle and upper classes. Therefore women were still being sheltered from public life and the idea that women, “[view] the world as if it were, from a little elevation in her own garden, where she makes an exact survey of the home scenes, but take not in the wider range” (More, 1800) was still believed but ratified slightly with the fact that women had begun to gain status in education. However, the outbreak of War significantly changed these ideals because abruptly hundreds of thousands of men were sent to the front lines of the War. This abrupt change in British society caused much upheaval in the daily lives of everyone because transportations workers, doctors, factor workers and an array of other workers were no longer working due to there deployment.
Thus many jobs opened up and had no traditional men workers to fill them. These changes in British society is what caused women to be taken from the confines of there homes and places into the traditional jobs of men. All the women who began work following the start of the War did so willingly in part because they wanted to be part of the War effort and wanted to keep the home fires burning. After the outbreak of War a record 2 million more women were in the work force, doing an array of difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs.
Before the War few women had jobs but those who did usually came from a working class background; with some middle class women working in class “approved.”
jobs.
Women from the working class had jobs because their family's survival depended on it, while middle class women took jobs because they wanted to. Women of the Aristocracy never worked because they had the luxury of doing almost anything they wanted. Before and during the War aristocratic women would spend most of there time working on philanthropy project. As the War evolved the projects the women focused on changed. Before the War the philanthropy project these women organized where aimed at the deserving poor; while during the War the women worked hard on fundraising for ambulances, medicine and drug boxes. They would also hold regular parties dealing with comfort boxes, bandage rolling and knitting.
This is quite a different life compared to the lives being lead by middle class women before and during the War. Before the War, middle class women could choice to work with the approval of her father - seeing how at this time married women could not work due to the bad reputation it would give a family. Unmarried middle class women if elected were allowed to work and did so usually in offices or as nurses because these were class “approved” jobs. Women of the middle class prior to the war were also working militantly on women suffrage through out Britain. During the War, women of the middle class could be found in every type of work and married middle class women have also joined the work force. While those who had been devoted to suffrage changed gears and used their power to get support for woman in the work force. The women of the working classes were the only women socially visible in the work force before the War.
The jobs that they held were usually as domestic servant or textile factory workers, while during the War working class women were offered a larger variety of jobs. The jobs that had opened up for middle and working class women following the start of the War were in all industries; women were seen working in munitions, transportation, WAAC and as nurses or V.A.Ds. All these areas of work were important to the War effort, not only because it supplied the front-line with needed supplies but also because to kept the country running throughout the War. V.A.Ds were some of the most important women in the War due to the fact that they were working not only in hospital but also on the front-lines. These women are also important because they were directly connected to the soldier and where often the last person most soldiers saw before they died of battle wounds.
The term V.A.D stands for an individual person involved in a voluntary aid detachment. A Voluntary Aid Detachment was an organization created in 1909 to supply much needed medical assistance in Britain, during war. Prior to the start of the First World War only about 2,500 women were registered V.A.Ds and were working in hospitals, but with the start of the war over 46,000 women registered to become V.A.Ds compared to the approximant 90,000 registered as V.A.Ds at the end of the War (Imperial War Museum). The rising number is V.A.D is also contributed to the fact that women wanted to help the war effort
and also that in 1916, the job became a paid position due to the need for nurses and nurse's aids. At the beginning of the War V.A.Ds worked mostly in hospitals but by 1915 V.A.D could also have post at the front-lines.
