Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

85 Workplace and Working-Class Women’s Cricket workers at Rowntree’s were paid a minimum of 49 shillings per week (men would be paid 71 shillings for a similar role), and Cadbury’s office staff also profited from working a 39-hour week, instead of the 44 hours for manual staff. 34 The WCA benefitted from these changing employment practices as banks, building societies, solicitors and broadcasters joined the organisation. While the Civil Service was less generous with their funding, women started played cricket just a year after being admitted into the Civil Service Sports Council, and just a few months after Chiswick was opened in July 1926. Like other areas of ‘white blouse’ employment, women were able to feminise positions within the Civil Service before the outbreak of war in 1914, and this continued in the interwar years. 35 By 1934 the Civil Service had established its own internal league between departments, and had grown so large it was granted county status by the WCA. Branches were formed not only from central London departments but also post office and telephone workers in Oxford, Norwich, and Southampton, and many of these women were working class. In all these areas of employment, however, women were prevented from playing due to a combination of the marriage bar, life cycle and the social expectation that such youthful frivolities would end in their late-teens. Middle-order batsman Connie Edge, one of four Cadbury’s operatives to play for the WCA’s Midlands district, did not play competitive cricket again after leaving the company upon marriage in August 1933. 36 Edge had also starred in the first WCA public match at Beckenham in 1929. The rapid growth of these sides highlights women’s eagerness to extend their cultural and physical boundaries. Nevertheless, while the financial burden of playing was less acute for better-paid employees, they were restrained, like their working-class sisters, by the inhibiting ideals of domesticity. Financial independence and physical freedom generally remained in the hands of single women and not their married sisters. Workplace cricket, due to the sheer size of these employers, was a cross- class affair as women of all backgrounds leapt at the new opportunities afforded to them. Yet these freedoms were precarious and relied on employer support and a certain organisational willingness, and leadership, from middle-class workers. Internal competitions were often arranged at larger factories; for example, Huntley and Palmer’s had teams made up from the icing, chocolate, sugar wafers, cake and packing departments, to name a few. Civil Service cricket was, like the WCA, led by an educated metropolitan elite but also contained many working-class players. Office and welfare staff usually managed sports teams as they possessed the educational, managerial and social capital to best perform this function. As women’s cricket became increasingly better organised so too did workers. Over 200 workplaces had women’s sides between the wars. 37 As the number of interested women grew, so too did the significance of the sport to employers. The haphazard early days of the 1920s – when girls had played in their gymslips or borrowed their brother’s clothes and equipment – was by the 1930s replaced with company-subsidised equipment, clothing, separate pitches and transport to matches or trials.