Before the Great War the position of women in society depended on birth, class, marriage, and men

Women had to live up to an ideal created by men. This meant women had to get along less intelligent than their husbands, women had to be well mannered, and modest in behaviour and speech. Women from richer middle and upper social class families had servants to look after their homes and werent expected to work. Upper class women were brought up and educated to be a dutiful wife. Lower class women had to look after their husband, manage everything in the house as well as finance, be utterly faithful to her husband and willingly manage a large familySome women did go to work in 1901 55% of single women and 14% of married women were at work. In 1914 the largest employer of women was the Domestic value with 1,600,000 this is because the Domestic Service was regarded as better than working in factories. About 656,000 women worked in the factories of the textile fabrication especially the cotton mills of northern England. Lots of women were in work but umteen of them merely made en ough money to live on.Married working class women faced a hatful of problems. Families were large 71% of women had four or more children and 41% had s eve or more. Many women thus far lost children to diseases like Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria, and Tubercular. Children died because they didnt have any health care and doctors were expensive and hard to find. Poverty, swingeing housing and child bearing affected the health of working class women probably because they put the health of their husbands first as they had to be at work to earn money.Lots of women wanted the vote onward the Great War. Suffragists wanted the vote and played by the law where as Suffragettes were more militant. The Suffragettes committed many acts of violence such as destruction of property and arson. Lots of people were against giving women the right to vote, even queen Victoria was. This meant womens suffrage had to gain support, so they continued with their marches and put posters up to feat to gain supp ort. The government passed a cat and mouse act which allowed Suffragettes to be released when they became ill because of their hunger pat and as soon as they were better again they were arrested and sent back to prison to finish their sentence. The blast of the First World War brought an end to the Suffragettes campaign.