‘Inequality’ and ‘value’ reconsidered? the employment of post office women, 1910–1922

In the British Civil Service, male workers were perceived more ‘valuable’ by managers owing to their supposed higher productivity and skills. This restricted women’s access to higher grade employment, and placed them on lower and different scales to their male colleagues. Yet women worked alongside men, both in the pre-war, wartime and interwar periods. Through examining the personnel practices of Britain’s largest Civil Service department – the Post Office – this article highlights the vital importance of this institution, and its women workers, to the nation’s war and reconstruction efforts. The inextricable connection between the Post Office and its main funder – the Treasury – brought tensions concerning the provision of labour, together with the short-term and long-term position of women in the department. When the First World War got underway, women’s vital contribution to the department’s efforts became apparent. Thus, when victory was in sight, Post Office managers made women a central component to their post-war plan, although initially it did not include a commitment to address the ubiquitous inequalities affecting male and female opportunity in the department. Yet the Post Office’s commitment to explicitly include women in its post-war plan, primarily owing to the shortage of suitably qualified men, placed it at the cutting edge in renegotiating with the government the position of women in the post-war labour market.