Women's factory work in World War I / Gareth Griffiths.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Women s Faclory Work in World War I chronicles the participation of women in the war effort. Enhanced by personal accounts of the women themselves, together with the story of those involved in producing this previously unknown photographic archive from the Home Office Industrial Museum, the reader is taken into the lives and backgrounds of those who entered the then unfamiliar world of industry. The majority of the photographs are drawn from this archive which developed from attempts to produce a contemporary record of World War I and the contribution of women to it. The women photographed surprise the reader with their apparent modernity, bringing the historical significance of this period to the fore. A larger proportion of working-class women found themselves employed outside the home for the first time: the number of women working in trades already associated with a female work-force increased; in traditionally male-dominated industries, women were used to replace those men who were called up; and the concentration of women employed in government munitions factories grew. Using nearly two hundred photographs, Gareth Griffiths provides a striking and informative insight into the development of a female work-force in British Industry during the social and economic upheaval of the war years. .