Bloody Brilliant Women summary

With the arrival of the First World War, a third of Britain’s civilian male labor force was lost to the war effort. Suddenly, the government was asking middle- and upper-class women – previously seen as too delicate – to roll up their sleeves and support the fight.

A large part of women’s contributions involved working in factories and in the medical field. This was made possible in 1915, when then-Minister of Munitions, David Lloyd George, introduced a policy named dilution.

Though women became empowered through work during the First World War, they soon found themselves out of a job when men returned from the front. Their only role was to have children, which the government saw as an act of patriotism. But many women actively went against these social expectations, opening clinics, distributing sex education pamphlets and campaigning for more reproductive rights.

One prominent advocate for these rights was author Marie Stopes. She campaigned for birth control for working-class women. By 1920, contraception was readily available, and on March 18, 1921, Stopes opened a Mother’s Clinic in north London, offering family planning advice and cervical caps to all.

While front-line soldiers are credited with the allied victory in World War II, attention must also be given to the thousands of women who supported the war effort. Just as they had during World War I, women worked in arms manufacturing, agriculture and engineering – and continued to raise children.

To understand the impact female engineers had during the war, consider Beatrice Shilling. In air battles, British fighter planes with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines struggled to perform the acrobatics needed to outperform the better-equipped enemy planes. When performing swoops and dives, fuel was prevented from being injected into the engines of the British aircraft, causing the engines to sputter and cut off. It was Beatrice Shilling and her Rolls-Royce team who developed a simple brass restrictor that would solve the problem.

The war left many Britons facing poverty, health-care and housing problems, and the government was expected to deal with these issues. Thanks to new legislation, lower-class women were finally provided for, but post-war reconstruction brought its own set of conflicts.

After the war, Britain expanded its welfare state. Lower-class citizens had access to much-needed universal benefits. Through a series of reforms in the mid- to late 1940s, the government aimed to provide for its people. One such reform was the National Insurance Act of 1946, which introduced improvements to social security. This included pensions, benefits for illness and maternity and funeral grants, among other things. For women, one of the most important developments was the National Health Service Act of 1948, which guaranteed universal health care.

Women could finally wave goodbye to the old-fashioned cervical cap they had relied on for contraception and pop the pill in the 1960s. With the risk of pregnancy lower than ever, sex was no longer something to be scared of.

A combination of improved contraception and abortion rights brought new sexual freedoms for women.

She was remarkable for becoming the first female prime minister, but Margaret Thatcher did nothing to advance her gender while in office. In fact, she played an active and outspoken role in diminishing the feminist movement.

Thatcher had a strong belief in meritocracy – something which would hold back the progress of other British women. She had become the first female leader of the Conservative Party, then the first female leader of the entire country on May 4, 1979. Given her path to success in politics, she believed hard work would lead to rewards regardless of gender. But she failed to recognize that a large part of her success was possible because she had married into wealth. Denis Thatcher, her husband, encouraged her to pursue a career at a time when most women were expected to stay at home bringing up the children. The marriage also allowed Margaret to study law and hire a nanny to look after the couple’s young son and daughter.