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HOW T H E WOME N S QUA R ED U P
In dealing with the efficiency of female labour in the metal trades,it has to
be borne carefully in mind that many of the women had,before the war,no
experience of working machines and that the experience of those who had
worked machines (e.g. textile workers) was of a very different kind from
that required for skilled engineering work.Where simple labouring was
concerned women were reasonably expected to become quickly proficient;
and in the case of work done on automatic machines, where technical
skill was subordinate to attention, carefulness and dexterity, they were
also expected to reach a fair level of proficiency in a short time. Such
expectations were generally satisfied.
In a shipyard, where the work done by women was drilling, red-leading
and measuring rivets, the firm, while satisfied that the women were more
attentive to their work than men, did not think their work so good. On
the other hand, a firm employing women at plate-edge machines found
them very satisfactory and, in some cases, superior to men. One woman
earned 35s (£1.75) per week, while the earnings of the man whom she
succeeded had been 28s (£1.40) to 30s (£1.50) per week.The woman’s mate
(a man) was earning higher wages than ever he had done before, and this
was attributed to the woman’s ability. In another case of women working
drilling and other machines requiring about equal skill, a firm considered
that the women were better than male apprentices of two and three
years’experience working the same machines,and at one machine as good
as a journeyman earning 9 ½d (4p) per hour.
(Source:AW Kirkcaldy ed.,Labour Finance and theWar,Pitman Publishing,1916)
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