For England’s Sake: Women Engineers in the First World War
Describing the First World War as ‘an engineers’ war’, which required ‘arms more than men’, Lloyd George acted on the urgent need to employ women in the armaments industries. Henrietta Heald explains how they in turn responded to the challenges.
The Shell Crisis of May 1915 triggered a political earthquake in Britain that would lead eventually to the fall of the Asquith government. At its heart was the revelation that heavy British losses on the Western Front had been caused by a catastrophic shortage of artillery shells. Immediate measures to deal with the crisis included the creation of a Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd George and a massive recruitment drive for industrial workers. The women who answered the call in their hundreds of thousands not only provided the vital production capacity to salvage the situation but also made great strides towards their own economic emancipation.
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