Scottish Council for Women's Trades

The Scottish Council for Women's Trades was an organisation in the early 1900s that campaigned for improvements in the working conditions of women. The organisation was originally formed in 1894 as the Glasgow Council for Women's Trades.[1]

After two investigations were conducted by Margaret Irwin into the workplace conditions for female shop assistants, finding that women were being expected to work 12–17 hours per day, and being forbidden from sitting down while at work, the Glasgow Council for Women's Trades drafted a bill that would require employers to make suitable seating available to their staff.[2] The first attempt to get the bill through the UK Parliament failed, but an immediate second attempt succeeded and the requirement for employers to provide one seat for every three shop employees became law on 1 January 1900 as the Seats for Shop Assistants Act 1899.[3]

Margaret Irwin died in 1940; the council had been "wound up" in 1939.[4]

Publications
  • 1897 Margaret Irwin. Home Work Among Women. Report of an Enquiry conducted by the Scottish Council for Women's Trades.
  • 1900 Margaret Irwin. Women's Work in Tailoring and Dressmaking. Report of an Enquiry conducted by the Scottish Council for Women's Trades.
  • 1910 Margaret Irwin. Home Work In Ireland. Scottish Council for Women's Trades.

References
  1. House of commons. Select committee on home work. House of Commons. 1907. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  2. Irwin, Margaret (1 July 1899). "The Shop Seats Bill Movement". Fortnightly Review. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  3. "The Public General Acts passed in the Sixty-Second and Sixty-Third Years of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria; being the Fifth Session of the Twenty-Sixth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". 1899. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  4. Sheila Lewenhak (1977). Women and trade unions : an outline history of women in the British trade union movement. ISBN 978-0312887759.
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