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  • Essay / Women's Work in the First World War - 671

    Women's Work in the First World WarSource A is a letter written long after the war in 1976 by a woman who lived through the First World War. This source could therefore prove to be inaccurate because it was written 58 years later. Source A is a positive source for showing comparisons between domestic service and war work. You can find out from this source that there was a huge difference in pay; In domestic service, women were lucky if they earned £2 a month and worked very long hours. However, when women worked in the war, cutting shell fuses by hand, they sucked up to £5 a week. Women found this salary remarkable and it made them rich. From source A we can find out that women working in domestic service were desperate to "get away" and leave due to the terrible conditions and the fact that they were considered second class citizens and could not do men's jobs. So when the need for war workers arose, most women were happy to go. Question 02; Study Sources A, B, and C Does the evidence from Source C support the evidence from Sources A and B about women's work during World War I? Source A is a positive source for showing comparisons between women working in domestic service and women working in war cutting fuses. It was written by a woman who lived and worked during World War I, which could prove its accuracy. Source B is part of a book written by Sylvia Pankhurst: a former suffragette leader in 1932. This source may therefore be inaccurate. Source B contains negative information about women working in a London aircraft factory painting airplane wings. This is an aganda poster made in 1916. It is useful because it shows the methods used by the government to get women to work. This also shows that women were considered important by the government in the war effort. However, due to the fact that this propaganda; Not all women would have been considered important during the First World War. This propaganda poster draws on the guilt of women because on the poster there is a man saying goodbye to his wife as he goes to war. The woman in the poster puts on her overalls and goes to work in munitions factories. This makes women feel like they should contribute to the war effort and help support their own country. Although this source is GovernmentPropaganda and may be considered unreliable, it is nevertheless useful in showing what propaganda was like during World War I..