Surplus women

Surplus women is a phrase coined during the Industrial Revolution referring to a perceived excess of unmarried women in Britain.

The 19th century saw improvements to agricultural productivity that stimulated population growth while reducing the demand for farm labour. This led to a worker surplus that was mainly absorbed by either domestic industry or New World agriculture. The surplus was roughly equal between the sexes, however disproportionate opportunities existed for men over women in employment domestically and abroad, and in armed service. By 1850 more than a quarter of the female population of the UK between 20 and 45 were unmarried, and finding increasing difficulty in accessing economic means.

The 1851 census put numbers to this disparity – between five hundred thousand and one million more women than men. The figures caused moral and social panic, with the widespread belief that there would be large numbers of unmarried women living lives of misery and poverty. Between 1850 and 1900 opportunities for women were expanding beyond simple domestic employment – at one point representing almost 40% of the British workforce. By the outbreak of the First World War this figure had declined to 32%, in large part due to the decline of the domestic sector. However, these jobs tended toward low wages and poor advancement opportunities; generally factory work, one of the largest female sectors was the textile trade.

The outbreak of war severely impacted these sectors; for example the collapse of cotton exports. At one point female unemployment was around 44%.

Even before the war, six out of seven boys and girls in Britain were compelled by financial necessity to leave school at the age of 14 to go into the workforce to earn a wage. In 1901, over half of all women workers were under 25 years of age. By 1911, 77 per cent of women workers were single, 14 per cent were married and 9 per cent were either divorced or widowed. Regardless of their marital status, females were able to find job opportunities, especially during the First World War due to absence of males in the workforce. Halfway through the war, by 1916, the female labor force had grown by 600,000.

World War I compounded the gender imbalance. The deaths of nearly one million men during the war increased the gender gap by over a million; from 670,000 to 1,700,000. The number of unmarried women seeking economic means grew dramatically. In addition, demobilisation and economic decline following the war caused high unemployment. The war increased female employment; however, the return of demobilised men displaced many from the workforce, as did the closure of many of the wartime factories. Hence women who had worked during the war found themselves struggling to find jobs and those approaching working age were not offered the opportunity.

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Wikipedia