Working women in inter-war Leicester

This exhibition serves to showcase the different jobs of women during the interwar period in Leicester, with a specific focus on service roles. It deals mainly with primary sources in the form of audio and transcripts from women recalling details about their jobs during the 1920s and 1930s. By looking through the EMOHA archives it is clear that the vast majority of working-class women began their working lives from the young age of 14, as this is when they left school. This was due to the lack of opportunities in higher education for women, as teenage wages formed an important part of the family economy. Usually, girls either joined a domestic service role (essentially, a maid) or began a career in one of Leicester’s many shoe and hosiery factories. Factory work contained a certain stigma with it, as many middle-class families refused to let their daughters work in such places, so many young women entered domestic service in the 1920s and '30s.  

Gladys Chapman highlights this by saying ‘“My father, of course, being old-fashioned as he was, no way could you go into a factory, he wouldn’t allow that, you’d go into service”.

What were their jobs like? What were their relationships with employers like? What opportunity did they have in their career? How much agency did they have? Were they happy with their jobs? What did they wear, and how much did they earn? These are just some of the questions that we will be looking at in our exhibition.