What were British womens roles during World War 1?
Women took over a lot of different jobs that had previously been done mostly or entirely by men. A lot of women did work in factories, and they also worked in farming and forestry, on the railways and the buses, they drove vans and became chauffeurs, they joined the newly formed Women’s Police Force. They were employed in banks, which had previously been rather stuffy about employing women. The Post Office had always employed women as postmistresses and sub-postmistresses, but now they employed a lot more women as postwomen. The Women’s Auxilliary Army, Navy and Airforce were formed, and many women joined up. A lot of women became nurses (there were many professional nurses already, of course, but many women became nurses temporarily for the duration). Agatha Christie for example went to work in a London hospital, and eventually worked in the hospital dispensary, where she acquired the valuable knowledge of poisons that came in useful when she began to write her detective stories. Ther
