Our Very Capable Stewardess

The interwar years heralded a golden and glamourous age on the liners, when women took to the seas, for travel or leisure, in ever greater numbers. 

Changes brought by the role of women in WW1, and the growing successes of the suffrage movement, meant that many women were asserting themselves with greater agency and purchasing power. Increasingly, shipping lines like P&O turned their attention to the particular needs of these independent female passengers. 

Stewardesses too increased in their visibility and numbers on board and, after 1919, they enjoyed equal pay with their male counterparts. But even in improving times, these women accounted for just 1% of all seafarers.