Women's Industrial Council facts for kids

The Women's Industrial Council (WIC) was a British group that worked to help women in their jobs. It was active from 1894 until about 1917. The WIC wanted to make sure women had fair working conditions and were treated well at work.

How it Started

The WIC actually began as a different group called the Women's Trade Union Association. Clementina Black started it in 1889 in the East End of London. This group aimed to bring together different women's trade unions. A trade union is a group of workers who join together to protect their rights and improve their working conditions.

Some early groups that joined included the East London Ropemakers' Union, led by Amie Hicks. Another was the confectioners' union, whose leader, Clara James, became an assistant for the association.

Important people from the Social Democratic Federation supported the group, including Amie Hicks. Male trade unionists like John Burns and Tom Mann also helped. However, fewer people joined over time. So, in 1894, the group was restarted as the "Women's Industrial Council." Its new main goal was to study and report on how women worked.

Investigating Work Conditions

With a new leader, Catherine Webb, this new plan worked much better. The WIC looked into more than one hundred different types of jobs. Most of their research was done in London. But they also studied conditions in other British cities.

Amie Hicks and Clara James did not agree with this new focus on research. They left the group in 1908. However, many other women who later became well-known joined the WIC. These included Margaret Bondfield, Ishbel Gordon, Elizabeth Leigh Hutchins, Mary Macarthur, Margaret MacDonald, Lucy Wyatt Papworth, and Dorothea Margaret Zimmern. The suffragette Louise Eates also joined.

The work of the WIC slowed down during World War I. The group seems to have stopped working around 1917.