Remembering Glasgow's women who played vital war role

By 1918, however, 30,000 women had jobs in the Clydeside industries.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 saw 22,000 Glasgow men and boys enlist in the army in the first week.

In 1916 the British Government introduced conscription, and by 1918, 200,000 were signed up.

When war broke out, shipyards and factories suddenly faced enormous pressure to produce more warships, munitions and a vast array of other products for the war.

This required a huge increase in capacity and a solution to the serious shortage of labour along the Clyde.

The Government’s answer was ‘dilution’ – employing more women to boost the workforce numbers. This was not universally popular, to say the least.

Women workers at Mavor & Coulson (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

A Greenock company complained to the Employers’ Association that women could be employed in shipbuilding - but only as a last and drastic resource.

It observed that given the ‘class of women’ likely to be employed, there was a danger of them getting ‘out of control’. Their representative suggested that in lieu of women the government should ‘bring over natives of Ireland or even India and draft them to the yards, to supplement the present labour supply’.

Lizzie Robertson receives her OBE (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

Dilution was unpopular with the trade unions who, in 1916, encouraged their members to strike against it. In part this was because women were paid less, and the unions believed that manufacturers would prefer to employ cheaper female labour after the war ended.

In 1916, union and socialist agitators opposing dilution were deported or imprisoned, and dilution continued regardless. 

Eventually, an agreement was reached, but under the promise that the women could only be trained to a semi-skilled level and had to work under supervision.

The agreement to the introduction of women was based on the urgent national necessity, and then only with written guarantees that the women would go at the end of the war, that the change would not prejudice the economic position of men, and that all trades union rights and customs were fully restored at the termination of the war.

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During the war, the biggest increase in female employment was in factories, particularly in munitions.

Previously, around 4000 women worked in heavy industry in Scotland. By 1917, more than 30,000 women were employed on Clydeside making munitions. By late 1918, 90% of the workers in the munitions industry across the UK were female.

The King at Ibrox, passing women munition workers (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

In September 1917, to help support the war effort (including the role of women), King George V toured shipyards, steel works and engineering companies on Clydeside.

He was greeted by large crowds as he met female munitions workers of the National Projectile Factory.

Dressed in their work clothes, they filled the stands at Ibrox Stadium where they watched the King carry out a royal investiture.

At the same event Lizzie Robertson became the first woman to be decorated by the King, receiving the Order of the British Empire for devotion to duty at the Cardonald Munitions Factory.

Women also worked on trams and buses in the city. Glasgow wartime tram drivers and conductresses were employed by Glasgow Corporation on the same conditions as males and by November 1916 earned equal pay.

Between 1914 and 1917, Clydeside shipyards manufactured 481 ships, a number only possible with the employment of women.

Women’s experience during World War 1 gave them a new level of financial freedom. They were, however, still not treated as equal to men. Employers were only obliged to pay women 75% of a man’s wage for the same job, but some unscrupulous companies would pay as little as 50%.

The Great War is often seen as a major turning point in the role of women in British history.

Yet within a few years of the end of the war, more than 25% of all working women were back in domestic service.