ABSTRACT
After the First World War there was a dramatic fall in the number and range of employment opportunities available to women. Although the feminization of some occupations continued to take place, notably in clerical and shopwork, gender divisions in paid and unpaid work remained entrenched. Contemporary official sources denied that this was the result of State social policy, claiming that occupational segregation was the result of women’s natural capacities and interests, employers’ preferences and trade unions’ exclusionary practices (Cmd 3508, 1920/30, pp. 10-14). However, closer inspection reveals that the State’s employment policies towards women consisted of much more than a refusal to intervene to assist working women, although this played a significant part. This chapter therefore examines several aspects of the employment policies of British governments which affected the position of working women between the wars: the ‘marriage bar’, the policies of protecting women in some respects but not others, programmes for the unemployed and the manipulation of unemployment benefit regulations.
