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HM Factory, Gretna was the United Kingdom's largest cordite factory in World War I. Women from all over the world came to work there, manufacturing what was known as the Devil's Porridge, a term coined by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to refer to the mixture of gun cotton and nitroglycerine that was used to produce cordite as a shell propellant. [38]
In the 1922 official history of women in munitions work and their wages, the government justified this by claiming that whereas "the man's wage is a "family" wage, the woman's is an "individual" wage" and by arguing that women did not unionise and fight for their rights and were therefore responsible for establishing the two standards.
During WWI, large numbers of women were recruited into jobs that had either been vacated by men who had gone to fight in the war, or had been created as part of the war effort. The high demand for weapons and the overall wartime situation resulted in munitions factories collectively becoming the largest employer of American women by 1918.
World War I saw women taking traditionally men's jobs in large numbers for the first time in American history. Many women worked on the assembly lines of factories, producing trucks and munitions, while department stores employed African American women as elevator operators and cafeteria waitresses for the first time. The Food Administration ...
Since most working age men were joining the military to fight in the war, women were required to take on the factory jobs that were traditionally held by men. [2] By the end of the war, there were almost three million women working in factories, around a third of whom were employed in the manufacture of munitions .
[1] However, by the agreement negotiated with the trade unions, women undertaking jobs covered by the Dilution agreement lost their jobs at the end of the First World War. [1] Although women were still paid less than men in the workforce, pay inequalities were starting to diminish as women were now getting paid two-thirds of the typical pay for ...
Gretna Girls at HM Factory Gretna. The Gretna Girls was a collective nickname given to women munition workers at HM Factory Gretna in World War One.Women came from all over the United Kingdom to work at the factory, but many were drawn from the surrounding areas of Scotland and Northern England.
Many women during World War I sought employment opportunities at factories. Women's health became a concern, as they were being exposed to working conditions that they were not used to. There were fears that the factory work undertaken by female workers could exert a damaging influence on their health, mind and morals. [6]