Women and Men in Peace Time

Times were hard both between the two World Wars and immediately after the Second.

On the plus side, between the wars women were better educated and many women found work as teachers, nurses or in offices. However, the Marriage Bar (rules requiring women to resign when they got married) stopped many of them from staying on at work. The civil service was one of the many organisations that did not allow women to work after marriage.

By the 1930`s about one third of women in Britain worked. After World War Two, light industries such as electronics and service industries such as banking grew. They provided a wider range of opportunities for women and so did shops.

New welfare services were set up in the 1940`s and large numbers of women got jobs in the National Health Service.

However, even when they did the same jobs as men, women were paid less.