Women of every station…have proved themselves able to undertake work which before the War was regarded as solely the province of men, and often of skilled men alone. Indeed, it is not too much to say that our Armies have been saved and victory assured largely by the women in the munition factories […]. I ask the House to consider this, together with the work done by women in hospitals, in agriculture, in transport trades, and in every type of clerical occupation, and I would respectfully submit, when time and occasion offer, it will be opportune to ask: where is the man, now, who would deny to women the civil rights which she has earned by hard work?
15 August 1916. Extract from ‘The Means of Victory. A Speech delivered by The Rt. Hon. Edwin Montagu, M.P., Minister of Munitions, on the 15th August, 1916’, pp. 45-6 [SPEC S/D 525 (P.C. 170)]. This week’s war: 107.
