In 1940 it was estimated that in order to supply all the forces another 1.5 million munitions workers would need to be added to the existing 3.5 million. Women were to make up half of these, with men predominating in managerial positions.  In Yorkshire many munitions factories were converted from jute works, to which they usually returned after the war ended. There are a number of examples of engineering works in the Leeds area being converted to munitions production during the war, such as Greenwood and Batley, the machine tool company, and Fairbairn, Lawson, Combe, Barbour Ltd (see Richard Moss, References).  

The workers employed in these works earned from 65/- (shillings, old money) to £5 per week; significantly more than they would earn working in Jute (see Morelli and Tomlinson in References). A typical munitions factory in Dundee would employ some 7,000 workers. In the ITV series The Way We Were, Connie Davison, born in 1922, relates how she worked at George Cohens at Stanningley, near Leeds, as an inspector checking the weight of the shells.  Connie relates how she, and other girls in her departments, wore turbans, whilst the girls on the machines needed to have hats with air holes in.

 

Because of acute skill shortages in the run up to the Second World War British engineering companies had to break down existing production processes into smaller constituent parts. This allowed the employment of persons trained over narrower ranges of skills and helped to create an exponential growth of female jobs, from 10.5% of total engineering employment in 1939 to 35.2% by 1943. Women were officially classified into those doing men’s work and those doing women’s work. The production of munitions completely depended upon the work of women, so much so that this was a principle reason why women were barred from active combat.  

 

This transfer of women into traditional male occupations wasn’t, of course, new. The same happened during World War One, when women working in munitions factories were called “munitionettes” or “Tommy’s sister.”  For example, the munitions factory at Barnbow in Leeds employed two thousand local women out of a total workforce of three thousand during the First World War. Coincidently (or maybe not), this factory closed in 1932, the same year that Wilson’s opened.  The BBC WW2 People’s War Archive of wartime memories has many recollections of those working in munitions factories. The work was hard – especially working shifts – and dangerous: one woman, recollecting her time working in a munitions factory, recounts how many workers became ill with jaundice and other problems because of their contact with TNT. However, many also remember the time as being exciting, and having a great sense of camaraderie (see the BBC website in References).

 

The wartime labour policy of deskilling in manufacturing work helped to decrease pay inequality between men and women in the munitions industries. However, as at the end of the First World War, the gains that women made in pay, and in working in traditional male employment areas, were sharply eroded. The trade unions, which increased in strength during the war owing to their greater bargaining power, were not only complicit in this process, but actively fought in many cases to take back gains made by women.  Even today, for many traditional male occupations, equality in the division of labour between the genders is far from what it was during the war.

It is difficult to find exact numbers of those killed, poisoned or maimed in munitions work: either in accidents – sometimes in explosions – or through air raids as the Luftwaffe tried to disrupt production. Certainly there were very many, and at the time of writing (June 2009) there is a campaign to get the Ministry of Defence to introduce an award for those who worked in munitions factories.

Carlo Morelli and Jim Tomlinson, ‘Women and Work after the Second World War: A Case Study of the Jute Industry, Circa 1945–1954’, Twentieth Century British History, 2008; 19: pp 61-82.

Robert A. Hart, ‘Women doing men’s work and women doing women’s work: Female work and pay in British wartime engineering’, Explorations in Economic History, Issue 44, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 114-130.

Ian Gazeley,‘The Levelling of pay in Britain during the Second World War’, European Review Of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, 10:2003, pp 175-204.

Richard Moss, VE Day 60 Years: Leeds - A Manufacturing City During Wartime, 2005. This can be found online at the 24 hour museum  

BBC WW2 People’s War Archive 
 
Further Information