ABSTRACT
Although unemployment was high for the whole of the inter-war years the periods of greatest distress were the years immediately after the collapse of the post-war boom, particularly 1920–1923, and those dominated by the depression of 1929–1934. This chapter analyses that to what extent the unemployed movement responded to the specific needs of women, particularly married women, at a time when massive social pressures pushed them back into the home. From 1921 the movement acquired some sort of national coordination under the title of the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee Movement (NUWCM/NUWM) with a head office in London and full-time officers paid 30s a week. Nominally the NUWM had a policy of sexual equality, but in practice it was imbued with an aggressively patriarchal ideology and culture. The NUWM reinforced the prevailing sexual division of labour and failed to promote the interests of women workers.
