Cost of Living, 1922
So why then were women so concerned with wages and the cost of living? Partly this was due to people often feeling that their wages did not allow them to live how they would wish - and this was particularly true in the days before discount stores and the like. Yet the situation is more complicated than that. Women earned significantly less than men and more than that were not employed in positions of equal pay, conditions and responsibility.
A ‘temp’ girl working as a clerk for the Civil Service would earn £2 11 shillings (s) and 8 pence (d) per week (that’s £93.96 in equivalent modern money) in London. These are good middle class wages. Her budget is based on her living at home with her family, and with no dependants:
Budget Items |
£.s.d |
£ p |
|---|---|---|
| Lodgings, part board and laundry | £1 11s 8d |
£57.59 |
| Fares to office | 7s 0d |
£12.73 |
| Lunches and teas out | 6s 6d |
£11.82
|
| Clothes, holidays, studies, savings, amusements and "luxuries" | 6s 6d |
£11.82 |
Although it might seem that you would have a lot of money left you have to remember that things were cheaper. For example, the average rent in the UK today is £132 per week, without part board or laundry. From 1930 until 1946, in the Civil Service, Post Office and the BBC, married women were generally barred from employment and so a woman would have had to leave her job if she got married.
Imagine that you have a budget of £11.82 a week for all your clothes, holidays, studies, savings, amusements and “luxuries” and no credit cards. You would have to save money in order to purchase clothes. Women’s magazines and journals understood this and instead of talking about transitory fashion which one might purchase monthly or even weekly, as they do now, instead talked about purchasing a wardrobe for the season ie winter or summer. Below is a list of essential clothing items and their cost both in 1922 and the equivalent now.
Produce |
Cost: £ s d |
Cost: £ p |
|---|---|---|
Hat |
15s 0d |
£27.28 |
Stockings |
2s 11d |
£5.30 |
Corset |
9s 10d |
£17.88 |
Gloves |
4s 11d |
£8.94 |
Footwear |
12s 11d |
£23.49 |
Blouse |
£1 10s 0d |
£54.56 |
Skirt |
£1 0s 0d |
£36.37 |
Dress |
£2 10s 0d |
£90.93 |
Just how much would you be able to afford if normal day clothes were that expensive and if credit cards and discount stores did not exist?
The cost of clothing meant that women could not buy a whole new set of clothes every year and that they would have to mend items in order to re-use them, or alter them year from year to take account of changing fashions (or body size!).
Journals such as Women’s Outlook published articles advising women on economical buying and how to mend and sew clothes. Click on the images to read the full articles, from the Outlook of 9 April 1927.
We have put together more detailed extracts from the AWCS 1922 pamphlet ‘The cost of living for women clerical workers: some facts and figures’ for you to download (pdf 916kb).
The Equal Pay Act 1970 finally enshrined in law the principle of equal pay for equal work, although the implementation date was not until 1 January 1976.
