Manual work and pay, 1900-1970

This chapter examines changes in the nature of waged work and pay in the first seventy years of the 20th century. At the beginning of the century, the vast majority of adult men and only one in three adult women worked. By 1970, nearly half of all adult women were in paid employment and the proportion of economically inactive adult men had increased to about one in ten. Female employment remained concentrated in very few industrial sectors during the first half of the century.