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trench notes
scot t i sh women a t war
S
cottish women found that they too had a role to play in the
war effort and one statistic sums up their contribution and the
great changes that took place during the course of the war.
The population census of 1911 showed that 185,442 men were
employed in the heavy industries of Clydeside. But apart from
the 2,062 women employed in the Singer Sewing Machine Factory
at Clydebank, there were only 3,758 women in full employment in
the heavy sector, most of them in the chemical industry, itself
a minor contributor to the region’s economy. Five years later,
by the middle of 1916, the number of women involved in heavy
industries in the same area had climbed to 18,500 and by the end
of the war 31,500 women were working in the munitions industry
in Scotland.