On the Job

When asked what they liked most about war work, women factory workers named the money first, and the company second. ¹ Even though equal pay with men was achieved only in rare cases, war wages represented a substantial rise for most women compared with their pre-war average of only £1 10s a week. Earnings varied a lot, but in 1944 the average reached £3, and in a busy week with plenty of overtime and maximum bonuses, a woman in a royal ordnance factory might earn as much as £7 or £8. ² To women who had worked as domestic servants, clothing workers or shop girls even average war wages seemed ‘fabulous sums’, just as they had in the First World War. Mona Marshall was earning only 10s a week as a nurse-maid in Lincoln in 1941, when she left for a job making shells for naval guns in a steelworks in Sheffield: ‘I always remember the first wage that I earned … was two pounds, two shillings and two pence. That was my first week's wage and I thought I'd got the earth … two pounds two and tuppence all for myself. I thought it was wonderful.’ ³