Problems of middle-aged women trying to find work

Problems faced by middle-aged women searching for work were raised in the Observer of 100 years ago.

The paper’s column with a feminine slant, Women’s Chat, noted that ‘a middle aged man was not too decrepit to fight for his country but the too-old-at-40 ban still applies to women’.

There were middle aged women by the hundreds and thousands , who in their youth had years of experience of industrial life, said the paper.

But their knowledge and training was, in many cases, not enough to secure them a job.

No such barriers faced younger women who were wanted for services connected with the Army and especially for work on the land.

Women’s Chat acknowledged that some jobs in the countryside were hard and ‘rather beyond the physical powers of the middle aged woman’.

However, the Ministry of Pensions had lately been inviting applications from ‘young women of good education’ when the work there – involving the investigation and awarding of pensions to disabled men – seemed to call for women with more experience in life who would ‘undertake the responsibilities from a high sense of duty’.

Helpfully, Women’s Chat included the address to which applications for the Ministry of Pension’s posts should be sent.

Following the passing of the Military Service Act in 1916, single men who were aged between 18 and 41 faced conscription, although this was later changed to all men between those ages. In April, 1918, the upper age limit was increased to 50.