Women in brewing before WW I

The numbers employed in brewing were quite small, just 84,969. In 1910 there were 4,512 breweries in the UK. That works out to just 18 employees per brewery. Or fuck all, really. Though not so surprising, as around three-quarters of those breweries were brewpubs. Which probably employed, at most, one or two people.

Let’s take look more closely at where those 80,000-odd people were employed and who they were. In particular, looking at how many of them were women. Starting with hourly-paid workers.

Employment in the brewing industry in 1907
	Wage-earners. Average No. and age class.
	Males.		Females
Trades.	Under 18.	Over 18.	Under 18.	Over 18.
Brewing & Malting	4,148	63,069	175	1,604
Spirit Distilling	125	5,378	5	124
Spirit Compounding, Rectifying, &c	23	633	7	27
Bottling	3,115	9,793	697	3,148
Aerated Waters, British Wines, &C	3,063	16,354	449	4,804
	10,474	95,227	1,333	9,707
Source:
Brewers' Almanack 1915, page 222.

In brewing, male employees vastly outnumbered women. Only about 2.5% were women. Most of those would have worked in bottling. While in specialist bottlers, around 30% of the hourly-paid workers were women. Though there would have been the occasional female brewer amongst the thousands of publican brewers.

Let’s have a look now at salaried staff. Which would mostly be the office staff.

Employment in the brewing industry in 1907
	Salaried persons. Average No. and age class.
	Males.		Females.
Trades.	Under 18.	Over 18.	Under 18.	Over 18
Brewing & Malting	978	14,786	14	195
Spirit Distilling	60	812	2	19
Spirit Compounding, Rectifying, &c	23	412	4	6
Bottling	278	2,989	20	225
Aerated Waters, British Wines, &C	261	3,399	30	297
	1,600	22,398	70	742
Source:
Brewers' Almanack 1915, page 222.

The proportion of women in salaried positions was even lower. Just 1.3%. Lumping both categories together, it averaged out to only about half a woman per brewery.