Women may have proved they could do a man's job in the First World War, but would they be able to keep the jobs and be treated the same as men were? The best way of achieving equality in the workplace was through the trades unions, but between 1918 and 1939 the unions were not always keen on helping women.

Read the following information adapted from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) website http://www.unionhistory.info/index.php.

In 1920, women's membership of trade unions reached a peak of 1,342,000 (25% of the total female workforce). By 1939, the figure had dropped to one million, even though the percentage of women in the workforce had risen to 30%. In the general climate of unemployment and cost cutting, women workers were perceived as a threat. This provoked contradictory attitudes on the part of the union leadership. On the one hand many unions that organised in industries with a high percentage of women workers (e.g. retailing, teaching, the Post Office and other clerical occupations) sought to restrict the employment of women. Almost all of them refused to campaign or shelved demands for equal pay and instead pursued wage claims that increased the differentials between men and women. Some, like the Union of Post Office Workers in 1935, went even further and called for a halt to female employment altogether.

On the other hand, individual unions and the TUC were actively involved in women's recruitment campaigns. In 1925, the TUC established its own Women's Conference and, in 1930, a Women's Advisory Committee. The Women's Committee launched a campaign to increase the involvement of women. A new range of publicity material was launched in 1937 based on the assumption that trade unionism would only appeal to women if it was concerned with "womanly" issues such as health and beauty.

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