Invisible Labour: The Women Who Kept Wartime Telecommunications Running

Women telephonists operating a switchboard with steel helmets, 1939-45 (POST 56/14)

Content note: contains references to sexual violence

The earliest known woman to work for the postal service was a postwoman in the 1830s. By the 1870s, women were working as telegraph operators and clerks. They moved into telephone work when the General Post Office (GPO) took over telephone services in the UK from 1912 onwards.

During the Second World War, more women than ever filled jobs with the GPO. Hundreds of thousands of them worked in skilled positions in telephone exchanges and telegraph offices day and night.

Telecommunications work in the GPO provided some of the first office jobs for women in the UK. A closer look at these roles also gives us an insight into the lives of women office workers during the Second World War.

Telecommunications Work in the GPO

A large portion of wartime telecommunications was invisible to the public.

Telephonists answered calls and connected them to relevant numbers on the switchboard, circulating air raid messages that may have saved lives. Telephone switchboards maintained links between factories, munition works, food suppliers, docks and mines – all essential wartime industries. Telegraphists received and transmitted messages on behalf of the government, military and the public using radio waves and Morse Code. Girl messengers – as they were known by the GPO – would then deliver the telegrams, at the young age of 14 or 15.

GPO PR campaigns advertised telephony as a ‘career for girls’, with imagery largely portraying White women wearing recognisable iconic headsets. Although the GPO did not record employee ethnicity at the time, this does not indicate that women of colour were absent from these roles.

GPO leaflet advertising for telephonist roles, c.1946 (E14003/11)

Educated young women generally filled telegraphist and telephonist roles, given they had to pass a rigorous entrance exam to be accepted. Entrance exams for telephonists tested both mental arithmetic and verbal communication skills. Girl messengers delivering telegrams, on the other hand, often came from working-class backgrounds.

Notoriously strict supervisors trained women telephonists, telegraphists and girl messengers on the job. They enforced strict rules such as not wearing makeup through inspections.

A woman telegraphist in training, 1940 (POST 56/111)

The GPO also required telephonists to pronounce words clearly and precisely. They had to speak English and be either British subjects or their children. Before 1949, this term applied to people born within the British Empire.

‘Girls, we’ve got the British Empire Medal’

Women in telecommunications are rarely the first workers to come to mind when thinking about war work. However, GPO press announcements described the telephone network as the ‘nerve centre of the community’ and essential to the UK war effort.

Many telephonists were compelled to risk their lives to keep working, ducking below their switchboards to dodge flying glass from shattered windows and clouds of dust from falling ceilings. Scottish telephonists appeared unphased, asking callers if they would mind ‘speaking up’. ‘There is some noise going on here,’ telephonists explained, as bombs rained down. Only after union campaigning were they issued with protective steel helmets.

At the Dover telephone exchange, which suffered heavily from shelling due to its strategic location, telephonists worked shifts of over 25 hours without stopping. Colloquially known as ‘stickit girls’ for not leaving their posts, the press named them ‘heroines of the switchboard’. However, due to the strain of the work, some women were signed off at the end of the war with stress-induced illnesses.

Women proved that they were both capable and efficient at their jobs, and their courage did not go unnoticed. The Postmaster General recognised the staff at Dover Telephone Exchange for their courage, with assistant supervisor of the telephones Winifred Scanlan receiving both the Imperial Service Medal and British Empire Medal for her efforts. Scanlan shared the news with her telephonist colleagues at the office, announcing ‘Girls, we’ve got the British Empire Medal’.

The British Empire Medal awarded to telephonist Winifred Scanlan, c.1941 (2004-0024/01a)

Workers or Wives?

The GPO discriminated against women telecommunication workers due to gender stereotypes that granted fewer rights to women than to men.

These stereotypes sexualised women telecommunications workers, casting them as feminine and youthful. Women telephonists were labelled ‘hello girls’ and trained to speak in an ‘attractive voice’, earning them a reputation as the ‘perfect wives’. The GPO also expected women workers to be controlled, polite, tidy and accurate, as well as adaptable and humorous, creating more emotional labour and pressure for them.

Telephonists operating switchboards were required to multitask and sit for long hours, 1939-45 (POST 56/111)

Gender stereotypes impacted both the kinds of jobs available to women and their working conditions. They also defined women’s ability to work, or not. As professionals, women navigated gendered legislation such as the marriage bar that pigeonholed them into domestic roles as wives and mothers.

Introduced in 1876, the marriage bar was a law applied across the UK civil service that forced women to resign from work upon marriage. The policy reinforced traditional gender roles, placing men at work and women in the home.

Historically, the marriage bar was a contested subject among women workers. Upon their resignation, which some women referred to as their ‘forced retirement’, the GPO paid women a marriage gratuity – a lump sum in place of any pension benefits. Cumulatively, this meant women were able to earn less over their lifetimes than men.

Some women were deeply dissatisfied with this. Writing in 1930 for The Post, the journal of the Union of Post Office workers, a telephonist who resigned upon marriage asked readers, ‘why should a married woman be grudged the opportunity to earn a living? Do we commit a crime when we get married?’.

During the Second World War, the marriage bar was temporarily suspended to allow more women to fill the labour shortages created by men going to war. However, when women married, the GPO moved many of them to temporary contracts, making them cheaper to hire and easier to dismiss.

Women such as Counter Clerk and Telephonist Vera Bucknell signed statements of temporary employment, recognising that their ‘services may be discontinued without notice’. By doing so, they signed away their rights to a pension, sick pay and promotions.

A printed statement signed by temporary worker Vera Bucknell, 1943 (2010-0406)

Divorced women had to apply to be reinstated as full-time employees. Some women, who were separated but unable to divorce for economic reasons or otherwise, were forced to remain in temporary positions without full-time benefits. This reinforced negative social taboos around marital breakdown.

In 1946, when the marriage bar was abolished, women were allowed to continue working after marriage. Those who moved to temporary contracts were reinstated as full-time workers, giving them job security, sick pay and contributions to a pension. However, attitudes towards women’s roles at work and home were slower to change.

Night Work

Historically, the GPO dissuaded women from working at night due to security concerns and domestic expectations, helping to justify their lower rates of pay compared to men’s.

However, during the Second World War, it became impossible to run services without women at night, meaning they were expected to work later and even overnight. Women worked on a rota, with some sleeping in bunks at telephone exchanges so that they could start early the next morning.

Night work came with added dangers, as blackouts to prevent enemy fire often meant travelling home in the darkness. Violence against telephonists, including sexual assault, increased during this period. The staff council raised this with the Home Office, which responded by increasing police presence around telephone exchanges.

Though some women were sexually assaulted while working nights, their new working conditions were strategically beneficial for the longstanding campaign to improve women’s wages. This campaign was underway by the early 1900s, when an enquiry found women clerks and telegraphists were not receiving enough pay, labelling their salaries a ‘pocket money wage’.

Despite their previous reluctance to support women, the male-dominated Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) stepped up during the Second World War to demand gender pay equality for those working between 8pm and 6am.

In a 1941 claim it submitted to GPO management, the union argued that women had been earning approximately 20% less than men doing the same job. After much debate and campaigning, full-time women were the first to be awarded this extra pay, known as allowances. This was later given to temporary and part-time workers, as well as cleaners.

Letter from the UPW requesting a pay increase for women working on a part-time basis at night, 1943 (Post 33/ 5696)

With national economic recovery a priority, many women remained employed at the GPO beyond the Second World War. The scale and efficiency of women’s war work had also given momentum to the longstanding campaign for better working rights, resulting in lasting improvements after it ended.

In 1955, the GPO committed to gradually increase women’s wages until they matched those of men working the same jobs. Fifteen years later, new UK laws made it illegal to pay men and women doing the same jobs different salaries. Despite these changes, the gender pay gap continues to exist.

To find out more about women’s telecommunications work in the GPO, be sure to explore the display case in our permanent gallery at The Postal Museum. The Postal Museum would like to acknowledge Dr. Helen Glew and Dr. Mark Crowley for their research that helped inform this display.

Bibliography

• Crowley, M. (2010) Women Workers in the General Post Office, 1939-1945: Gender Conflict, or Political Emancipation.
• Crowley, M. (2012) ‘Women Post Office Workers in Britain: The Long Struggle for Gender Equality and the Positive Impact of World War II’. Essays in Economic and Business History, 3, pp. 77-91.
• Glew, H. (2016) Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation, Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900-55. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Glew, H. (2020) “Maiden, Whom We Never See’: Cultural Representations of the ‘Lady Telephonist’ in Britain ca. 1880–1930 and Institutional Responses.” Information & Culture, 55 (1), pp. 30–50.  Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26893317.
• From The Postal Museum Archive:
  • Post 60/233
  • Post 56/99
  • Post 33/5696