Women and ‘mens’ work Why were many women not welcomed in many engineering factories?

By 1916 it was clear that women had become a vital part of the war effort. The biggest increase in female employment was in the previously male-dominated engineering industry, especially the part that made munitions.

Munitions meant every type of explosive artillery shell or bullet made for the war effort. The munitions factories were dangerous and unpleasant, with women working around the clock with explosive mixtures described as the ‘devil’s porridge’. In all sixty-one British workers died from poisoning and seventy-one were killed by explosions.

Before the war, fewer than 4,000 women worked in heavy industry in Scotland. By 1917 over 30,000 women were employed during the war making munitions in Scotland. At first, men working in the engineering factories were worried about their loss of status and the threat to their wages. The problem was called ‘dilution’.

What was dilution? Dilution meant the fear expressed by skilled men who had served a seven year apprenticeship that their skills would be ‘diluted’ by quickly-trained women. Those men feared that working women would weaken and threaten their skills, their status in the workforce, their wages and even their future employment.

How was the issue of dilution solved? As the demand for more weapons and munitions grew, the need to find an answer to the dilution row became urgent. The Ministry of Munitions introduced a dilution scheme whereby skilled jobs were broken down into individual processes. A women could be trained in that process and be allowed to work while under supervision.

That way many women could be trained in different processes so the job was done but the status and skill of the ‘skilled man’ was not undermined. The Munitions of War Act of 1915 also suggested that women should be paid comparable rates to men but that seldom happened.