At the beginning of the century, mass production had hardly started and few women went out to work. Two world wars were the catalysts for change. During World War I (AD 1914-18), women did men’s jobs for the first time, working in transport, on the land, and in munitions factories. Before the war, large numbers of men and women worked as domestic servants, but afterwards they preferred the independence and the pay of other jobs.

Between the Wars, traditional heavy industries like coal-mining, steel-making and shipbuilding experienced mass unemployment. After a brief recovery during World War II, this sector continued to decline. Men found work in new industries like motor manufacturing, but this (as did many factory jobs for both sexes) involved repetitive, production-line work and was vulnerable to down-turns in the economy.

Advances in communications and new technology in the 1980s and 1990s produced new industries like computing, ‘e-commerce’ and call-centres. More women were at work than at home and the majority of people worked in light industry, service industries or the public sector. Globalisation meant that all national economies were competing. New industries proved as vulnerable to economic fluctuations as old ones, and the only answer seemed to be constant adaptability on the part of employers and workers.