Women, War and Social Change: Women in Britain in World War II

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Penny Summerfield

Published:

1988

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan UK

Twentieth-century wars have been seen not just as periods of social change for women, but as periods of progress towards their emancipation. Contemporaries spoke in these terms. For instance Edith Summerskill wrote in March 1942: 'The freedom which women are enjoying today will spell the doom of home life as enjoyed by the male who is lord and master immediately he enters his own front door.'1 The view that World War II contributed significantly to the growth of equality between the sexes was popular with historians until relatively recently. In 1974, for example, Arthur Marwick concluded a discussion of the effects of the war on British, American, Russian and German women, by stating that their participation as workers in the war effort 'can be seen at work everywhere in further developments in the status of women'.2 More recently, historians have become increasingly dismissive of an uncritical reading of this view, and indeed Marwick himself has qualified his earlier position. Gail Braybon argues that the positive effects of World War I on women have been greatly exaggerated, and I put forward a similar argument in a study of the effects of mobilisation and 'dilution' on women in World War I in Britain.

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