ABSTRACT
Women might return to the domestic sphere, but the door to the outside remained open. Although many of the transformations were to prove temporary, the movement of women from the private to the public world and the acknowledgement of a new relationship with the state would become permanent. The largest concentration of reasonably well-paid women in industry was in the textile trades, which would also be affected by the war; the second-largest area of female employment was domestic service, where women, although initially untouched by immediate job losses, would eventually leave as large households were scaled down under wartime conditions and as other job opportunities beckoned from 1915 onwards. The moderate and the radical both found that the war was altering the social landscape, bringing together women with common concerns across the social divide. The notion of ladies bountiful dispensing charity was traditional, and had already come to be resented by many, including women involved in pre-war political activities.
