Strategies and Stratagems for the Employment of Women in the British Civil Service, 1919–1939

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Abstract
When faced in 1920 with allegations of unfair treatment of women civil servants, Austen Chamberlain, the chancellor of the exchequer, expressed some surprise and countered that the postwar settlement not only ‘marked a great advance in the position of women in the Civil Service, but appeared to provide the most suitable machinery for ensuring that the opportunities afforded to women in the Civil Service should be full and liberal. Indeed…the proposals are the best that could be adopted in the interests of women themselves.’ Was the chancellor right? And if not, why not? Such questions may seem surprising or even wilfully obscure to more traditional administrative historians: of what importance anyway are the real or imagined grievances of a gaggle of women, most of whom were humble rank and file? That view, however, is appropriate only if the civil service is taken at its own estimation or, rather, that of its masters, those men at the top in what was called, variously, the first division, class I, and the administrative grade. Behind its façade of bland homogeneity raged both class and gender conflict. The former has been studied at some length. The latter has not. In beginning to remedy this deficiency this article inspects the treatment by the civil service, with the Treasury at its head, of one category of staff, women; an inspection which illuminates its public image as a rational and professional body representative of society and responsive to its needs.

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