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Home | Active service | On enemy territory | Extraordinary courage | Women at war | Secrets and spies | Find out more | Credits
'This is no time to be frail! The dainty days are done for the duration,' said the advertising.
Many women did unexciting but vital work. Over six million were involved in civilian war work; a million worked in engineering and manufacturing; 80,000 became landgirls.
Work like this was considered so important that conscripts were not allowed to join the armed forces after 1943. Although conditions were often hard, on the land the food was good, and for many women it was the first time they had been paid so much. But skilled women were paid less than unskilled men in the factories, and in Glasgow they went on strike and won a pay rise.
Volunteers were also encouraged. The Women's Voluntary Service, which later became the Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS), had a million members, darning 38,000 pairs of socks a week for the Army. They also helped with air-raid precautions and offered 'tea and sympathy' in many unlikely circumstances.
In France, women played different roles. Francois Cammaerts, ex-SOE, recalls: 'The structure of resistance in the south of France was the housewife. There was no Maquis in the first year I was here. We were kept alive by women who fed us, lodged us, clothed us, laundered us and, when necessary, rode bicycles up into the mountains to get extra food to feed us. We couldn't have worked without them, and they risked their home, their children, their parents. By the time Hiroshima horrified the world, it was obvious that women and children were as exposed to war as men were. All we were risking was our skin, but our hosts and hostesses were risking far more! And if anything should be romanticised, it's that, not us.'
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