ABSTRACT
For working class women in the rural areas, as elsewhere, what changes in economic opportunity the war had brought soon vanished. In agriculture itself comparisons are very difficult since in the 1921 census the categories were again changed and brought farmers’ wives and daughters back in as an economically active group. If rural women made a permanent gain at all as a result of the war it was the Women’s Institutes. These appeared in 1915 under the wing of the Agricultural Organisation Society. After 1921, prices stabilized, not to fall again, until 1929-30, but this brought little comfort to many arable farmers. By the early spring of 1923 agriculture was perceived by those who were part of it to be in crisis and a delegation composed of the National Farmers Union, the County Landowners Association and the National Union of Agricultural Workers went to the Prime Minister.
