Women and War


During the 1930s, a woman’s place was most certainly in the home, but the invasion of Poland changed all that. When WWII began in 1939, the British government started campaigning for women to assist in the War Effort. Two years later, in order to meet the spiralling costs of war, all women over the age of 18 faced conscription.


Rather than bear arms, however, women were required to manufacture munitions, work the land, or perform civil defence duties, as air wardens, or fire fighters. It was a huge scale operation. In fact, in the early 1940s, women were responsible for a third of all British manufacturing, with 80,000 women working in agriculture.


In addition, 500,000 female volunteers from Britain and across the Empire performed duties in the auxiliary forces. These included the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRENS), the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).


Apart from nursing, these women carried out crucial tasks, like anti-aircraft surveillance, and provided vital assistance in military planning. Of course, some brave British women joined the Special Operations Forces (SOE), dropping behind enemy lines to work as saboteurs, couriers and radio operators.