During the 1800’s and early 1900’s there were many different social classes present in Britain. There were the upper class women, who were considered to be too respectful to work, and if they did it was assumed that their husbands were not rich enough to support the family. Most didn’t even have to do the work at home as they had people to do it for them. This made them increasingly dissatisfied and idle and as time went on they wanted to be given the opportunity to work and make a difference to society. Next there were the working class women, who had always made up a significant part of the workforce in the nineteenth century. Not only did they have to do the housewife duties of cooking, cleaning and motherly chores but also go out and earn the money for the family undertaking jobs such as domestic servants, mill workers, as well as working on farms or shops if the wives of farmers and shop owners. It was hard for them as people still expected them not to be working.

Something that made a large difference to the opportunity for women was the new technology. In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, which gave women a wonderful opportunity to do something different. When telephone companies began hiring operators they went to teenage boys but the companies soon regretted their decision as to be an operator you needed patience and the teenage boys soon lost this and started doing things such as playing pranks so the companies decided women would be perfect for the job. Women had pleasant voices that customers, most of whom were men, would like and because society did not treat women equally, they could be paid less and supervised more strictly than men. Many women jumped at the chance to become telephone operators and by 1900, almost all operators were women. Then another great invention was made that also helped the women of Britain to find jobs and it was the typewriter. It was invented in 1867 by Christopher Latham Sholes and gave women the chance to become secretaries, which made people see them more equally to men.

Some topics in this essay:
World War, Graham Bell, Latham Sholes, Oxford Cambridge, Medicine Women, London University, Girton College, Cambridge University, Scottish English, Barbara Bodichon, women chance, women britain, male female literacy, female literacy, upper class, class women, job women, literacy levels, “sweated trades”, female literacy levels, women girls, domestic servants,