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Summary Of On Her Their Lives Spending By Angela Woollacott

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The book On Her Their Lives Depend by Angela Woollacott was published in 1994 and is a compilation of woman munitions workers during the first world war. Angela Woolacott is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Women's Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University. Along with this book she also co-edited another book titled Gendering War Talk (1993). On Her, Their Lives Depend opens with a quick story of Elsie Mary Davey who was a seventeen-year-old worker that had moved far from her family home to work. The author then discusses her thesis which is the purpose of the book is the examination of the experience that women workers during this time period endured. Woollacott does this by compiling oral reports, worker's writings, …show more content…

She then follows this with the differing health, welfare, injuries, and deaths that women suffered and the status and experiences that they had as workers compared to the commonly thought role as head of the household before the war. With the changing concepts of the role of a woman, the book discusses the wages, autonomy, and public censure that came with working and the author even covers what the workers do in their leisure time such as socializing and sex. The book also offers illustrations of ad posters that sell products and the idea of nationalism in the sense of women doing their part to work in the factory. Along with having photos of real people working in the factories operating cranes, playing sports, passing out from fumes, and drawing differing scenes such as women's clubs socializing. The illustrations even include a postcard of a munitions factory from that time period. The author believed this perspective was important to highlight for Woollacott because munitions labor provided working-class women with freedom, a steady income, and even an upgraded standard of living for the first …show more content…

In having a comprehensive study of how World War I changed the lives of women she busts some myths and corrects some misapprehensions such as expressing the impact that the work had on the development of jaundice rather than it being something that can be fixed cosmetically like advertisement back then would portray. Woollacott views the female munitions worker as a significant modern figure who opposed the gender order through nationalistic effort and class distinctions through greater disposable income, mobility, and altering social behavior. The author having expertise in history with her main focus being British and Australian history helps to illustrate that she is a credible authority to report this information. The book itself is clearly organized to discuss the women's munition work to then expand to other aspects of their life such as wages and autonomy. The title of this book is an attention grabber due to its dramatic nature. This structuring of the book makes it easier to understand even for those that are not familiar with history such as discussing what mutation workers were and then going into various specific topics of the issue. Although the book itself came over twenty years ago and can be considered aged, Angela Woollacott's research on women

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