INDUSTRY DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR: WOOLWICH ARSENAL © IWM (Q 27839)
A female worker operates a naval gun rifling machine in the Royal Gun Factory at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, London, in May 1918.
WOMEN IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR© IWM (Q 30678)
Three members of the Women’s Land Army employed on an English farm during the First World War.
WOMEN AT WORK DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR© IWM (Q 30804)
A female driver lies on the ground as she works on a wheel with a spanner.
WOMEN AT WORK DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR© IWM (Q 30695)
A member of the Women’s Forestry Corps uses an axe to mark felled tree trunks for sawing during the First World War.
THE WOMEN’S ROYAL AIR FORCE (WRAF) DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR© IWM (Q 12291)
A motorcyclist with the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) on a Clyno motorcycle combination.
WOMEN RAILWAY WORKERS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR© IWM (Q 109866)
A female gas lamp cleaner of the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway at work outside Victoria station, Manchester.
“[A] newspaper article appeared objecting to women in trousers then worn by those who were undertaking duties which it would have been difficult or dangerous to perform in skirts. The mentality of persons who would prefer a woman to wear a skirt rather than trousers or breeches and a tunic when hoeing turnips, loading hay, clearing out a pig-sty, cleaning windows, or working in a munitions factory is difficult to understand. So comfortable did women find their two-legged dress that some land girls preferred to wear their breeches when off duty and were reported to their superior officers for so doing. These ladies refused to interfere, their opinion being that the dress was a decent and honourable uniform which the public should respect as it respected the uniform of the soldier.”
~ How We Lived Then, Mrs. C. S. Peel