A ‘Trade Union for Married Women’: The Women’s Co-operative Guild 1914–1920

The 1910s were years of unprecedented change for women in Britain. Organized feminism, on the one hand, and the upheavals induced by war, on the other, produced a range of cultural shifts and political and social reforms which constitute a watershed in women’s history. In this chapter I concentrate on the character and experience of what was arguably the most outstanding women’s organization of this period-the Women’s Cooperative Guild.