An important 19th Century campaigner for women's rights called Watts and her generation of trailblazers “the actual embodiment of our dreams.” Watts became “an ardent feminist” and later wrote that: “We wanted to feel that we could really walk around the world like citizens of the world ... not trained and set apart for what had by custom been regarded as women's work.”

Accountancy was one of those fields that many considered to be men's, not women's work. Women were not allowed to take accountancy qualifications, but Sir William Peat successfully argued for the ICAEW to support admitting women as a condition of legal enforcement. He came up against fierce opposition who argued that women should have their own institute, or that by admitting women it would lower the prestige, and salaries, of the profession.

Peat stood his ground. In an ICAEW meeting he said: “The question is the right of a woman to work under conditions suitable to her intellect and education and I think it would be an injustice to deny to them the privileges which we reserve to ourselves.”

The motion was passed and the principle of equal access conceded. Peat had helped open a door through which Ethel Watts and others were to pass. Although her early career wasn't without its setbacks. “She was not allowed even to answer the phone to a client; instead a man would answer, relay the client's question to her and then pass on the reply to the client.”

Watts would later pay tribute in a speech not only to the suffragettes who had fought for women's rights but to the many men who had given women their first opportunity to take articles in all-male environments.

Watts was passionate about social equality and she campaigned for it all her adult life, including serving as a local councillor in the part of London where she had grown up.

We wanted to feel that we could really walk around the world like citizens of the world ... not trained and set apart for what had by custom been regarded as women's work.”