Modern working women

Women’s Pioneer Housing aimed to ‘cater to the housing requirements of professional and other women of moderate means who require distinctive individual homes at moderate rents’. This meant that most of our tenants in the 1920s and 1930s were working women. The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act opened up new employment opportunities for women: as a result of the act, women were allowed to join professions such as the law and the civil service. Many barriers remained, however. The marriage bar dictated that women had to give up work if they married. There were also stark inequalities between the pay women received, compared to their male peers.

Suffragist Ray Strachey - who acted as WPH’s Chairman from 1921 to 1922 - was a prominent champion of women’s rights in the interwar years. She became Head of the Women’s Employment Federation in 19135 and published Careers and Openings for Women. In her book, Strachey demonstrated that more women were moving into professional services and clerical work, while there was a decline in domestic service. We can see these trends reflected in the occupations of WPH’s tenants, many of whom were pioneers in fields including education, science, and journalism.   

Click the images below to find out more about our tenants’ careers and their contributions to the fields of art, education and science.