Breakthrough Welsh Women

Work

Elizabeth Andrews

Elizabeth Andrews was an influential Welsh political activist in the early 20th century. As the first Labour Party Women’s Organiser for Wales, she brought the needs of working-class women to the fore and helped to introduce key reforms that eased the burden of housework in mining communities and improved maternity and childcare services.   

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth was at the forefront of a campaign to introduce pithead baths at collieries to relieve the pressure on women in the home. Before the introduction of pithead baths, a huge amount of housework was required to remove the ceaseless dirt brought back from the colliery and to prepare and carry tin baths for washing each miner after their shift. Women paid a heavy price for their unpaid role in servicing the demands of the coal industry. The toils of childbirth and domestic labour were such that, in some mining districts of South Wales, the mortality rates of women who worked in the home were higher than those of men who worked in the mines. The campaign for pithead baths was eventually successful and they were made compulsory in 1924.  

 

In the decades before the establishment of the NHS, Elizabeth also worked to improve maternity and childcare services in Wales. Her activism contributed to the establishment of one of the first nursery schools in Wales, in the Rhondda in the 1930s, and she continued to push for a nursery school to be opened in each education area.   

 

 

Marian Phillips

Marian Phillips was born in 1916 in the Welsh speaking village of Upper Brynaman, Carmarthenshire. She was the eldest of three children. As a child, she loved reading, and her father encouraged her by buying her books in English and Welsh from Morgan and Higgs’ bookshop in Wales. Her favourites were ‘Teulu Bach Nantoer’ by Moelona and ‘Gwilym a Benni Bach’ by W.Llewelyn Williams.    

Marian went to Maesydderwen Grammar School in Ystradgynlais, where she shone academically and passed her examinations a year early.  

 

In 1931, at the young age of 15, Marian enrolled as a student at the University College of Swansea, studying History, Philosophy, French and English. She decided to become a historian, and at the age of 18, she earned her BA with first class honours in History and was awarded the Gladstone Memorial Prize.  

 

Marian also expanded her world and knowledge of language through travel and new friendships. Between 1934 and 1936 she visited Germany, Austria and Budapest, and gained first-hand insights into the German political attitudes, the nature of Nazism and the turbulent changes in Europe.   

 

On her return to Swansea in 1937, she completed her Master’s thesis, becoming the only woman that year to gain an MA in Wales. She was recommended for a University of Wales scholarship when she was just 21 years old, and then decided to pursue a PhD at the University of London.  

 

In the lead up to World War Two, she attempted to alert people to the horror of the expansion of Nazism and persecution of Jews by means of lectures in Wales and writings in the Welsh language press. While in London, she was active in organisations aiding Jewish refugees already in Britain, and also in seeking asylum. She translated for refugees and helped them find employment.  

 

In 1939 she was offered the post of Assistant Lecturer at the University College of Swansea. She delivered 9 lectures a week, mostly on Welsh and European history and was heavily involved in the daily running of the History department. She also met her future husband in Swansea, Dr John Henry Jones, a lecturer in Classics.  

 

In the 1940s she moved to Aberystwyth. She wrote short stories in Welsh, several scholarly reviews for Y Traethodydd and Yr Efrydydd, and began to teach adult education classes in Welsh History.    

 

In the 1980s, Marian wrote a history of Europe in Welsh for Welsh-language secondary schools called Hanes Ewrop, 1815-1871. She continued to write, give lectures, and promote Welsh writing and culture for the rest of her life.

 

Marian died in March 2013 near Llanybydder, Carmarthenshire.  

 

Munitions Workers

During the Second World War, thousands of women in south Wales worked at munitions factories established in the counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth. The factories played a key role in Britain’s war effort, with the Royal Ordnance Factory at Bridgend employing a predominantly female workforce of around 35,000 at its height – making it one of the largest factories in British history. When wartime production reached its peak in 1943, 55% of all war workers in Wales were women.  

 

Work at the munitions factories was often dangerous. Staff faced air raids, hazardous machinery and the persistent threat of explosions on the production line. The TNT powder used in the manufacture of munitions also had the effect of turning workers’ skin and hair yellow, earning them the nickname ‘canaries’.   

 

Despite these challenges, wartime employment also gave many women a degree of independence that was a break from the norm. Social groups, such as choirs and sports teams, were formed with colleagues in the factories, and wages – often more generous relative to previous employment opportunities – gave many women greater scope for building social lives outside the home and their immediate communities.  

 

 

War work did not initiate greater gender equality in any straightforward or uniform way. Women workers were still being paid less than their male counterparts overall, stereotypes concerning what constituted “men’s” and “women’s” work remained pervasive, and there was a general expectation that any disruption to traditional gender roles would be returned to “normal” after the war. But there is little doubt that women’s wartime work entailed significant social and cultural changes, especially in industrial south Wales where the working lives of men and women had been so strictly separated. Given the prevalent recognition of men’s wartime contributions in monuments, books and Hollywood films, it is also important to remember the vital part played by women in south Wales in the fight against fascism during those years.

 

 

DOVE Workshop

The DOVE Workshop in Banwen was established by a group of women from the Dulais Valley in the wake of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, building on links forged in the local miners’ support group. They transformed the former offices of an opencast mine into a vibrant education and training centre, working with educational providers such as Swansea University and Neath College to provide learning opportunities to the local community, particularly women, amid a period of high unemployment. Women’s employment in the area had traditionally been limited to low paid, low status and part time work. As Mair Francis, one of DOVE’s founders, writes:  

 

‘Women in the valleys had little access to education or training, childcare or transport. There was a need to take control and make decisions for themselves’   

 

 

The DOVE workshop set out to provide flexible learning opportunities; providing childcare facilities, obtaining a minibus to transport people to classes, and housing a library designed to meet the specific needs of adult and part-time learners. By providing essential services such as these, the women of the DOVE workshop helped hundreds of people return to education and learn new skills.  

 

 

The DOVE workshop has developed into a vital communal hub in the valley, continuing to support people amid the challenges of a changing labour market and providing classes to improve health, wellbeing and the local environment.