514 TRAiNSACTIONS OP SECTION V. 



majority of employers, however, seem to be agreed that women generally 

 prefer mechanical and routine employment. 



In spite, however, of the view which we have found to be prevalent among 

 the majority of employers, experience is teaching that given the opportunity 

 women can produce work which, in spite of their lack of industrial experience, 

 compares favourably with similar work done by men. In some engineering 

 shops where every facility has been given to women to undertake new work 

 involving some judgment and skill their work has reached a high pitch of 

 excellence, and has been little inferior in output to that of men. Hitherto in 

 engineering women have been employed almost entirely on ' repetition ' work. 

 During the past few months, however, considerable and far-reaching changes 

 have been effected which are likely to have a very marked effect after the War. 

 In a factory which is engaged in the production of projectiles up to 4'5 in. a 

 new department was started a short time ago, the workpeople being women, 

 under the direction and supervision of a few expert men. Though the majority 

 of the women were raw hands totally unaccustomed to tools it was found that 

 within a few days their work attained the necessary accuracy. Much of the 

 work demanded intelligence of a high degree. The women have shown initiative 

 as well as manipulative dexterity — e.g., in a certain screwing operation it was 

 customary, before the employment of women, to rough the thread out with the 

 tool and then to finish it off with taps. Some trouble having arisen owing to the 

 wearing of the taps, the women of their own initiative did away with the 

 second operation, and are now accurately chasing the threads to gauge with 

 the tool alone.'" This is work of which any mechanic might feel proud. Within 

 the past few months women have also undertaken heavier work than was pre- 

 viously thought possible. They are turning out 18-lb. high-explosive shells and 

 Russian 3-in. shrapnel, work involving twenty-one operations, all of which are 

 now done by women. On the delicate work necessary for time fuses they are 

 found particularly suitable. Women need encouragement and sympathy in 

 their new surroundings, and the ordinary male workshop attitude is not one 

 in which their best powers and abilities are encouraged. The standards of the 

 past are too apt still to bar the way to the encouragement of women's employ- 

 ment in other than mere mechanical work. Skilled workmen are sometimes 

 selfish and employers prejudiced, and this attitude may postpone the substitution 

 of women for men in some cases. Examples such as those given above are not 

 frequent, but they indicate .«!omething of the possibilities of the replacement 

 of men by women, especially in munitions, where women are increasingly needed. 



IV. — Possible Limitations to the Industrial Employability 



of Women. 



From what has been said before it will be obvious that, the customary 

 barriers to the employment of women having broken down, the chief factors 

 remaining are the fitness and willingness of women to undertake industrial 

 work. In the past the obstacles to women's employment have been 



1. Women's lack of physical strength and staying power as compared with 

 men's. Lack of physical strength effectually bars them from undertaking 

 work entailing any considerable physical strain. In some cases the work 

 has proved injurious to them, e.g., the carrying of heavy weights in ware- 

 houses. In the printing trade it has been suggested that women should do 

 'laying on.' As tliis often involves the handling of heavy rolls of paper the 

 process is really prohibitive to women unless it can be subdivided and the 

 heavier work given to the men. 



It is stated that women are less reliable than men owing to more 

 frequent absences on account of illness. Figures supplied by certain 

 insurance companies show that between the ages of 21 and 40 women's 

 absences are 15 per cent, as against men's 5| per cent., though below 21 

 years of age there is hardly any difference. In this connection it should, 



" Quoted from The Engineer, August 20, 1915. 



