ABSTRACT
It has often been assumed that during the Second World War the government, recalling women’s major contribution during the Great War, was quick to extend employment opportunities to women.1 However, the wartime government’s employment policies severely restricted women’s access to paid work between 1939 and 1941, to the point where it was beginning to undermine the war effort. Moreover, the recruitment and demobilization policies during and after the war, which could have potentially extended ‘a new social and economic freedom to women which could never entirely be lost’ (Marwick, 1976, p. 142), were in fact designed to prevent such an occurrence. This chapter describes the series of ways in which wartime government policies maintained women’s position as low-paid subordinates in the labour market and as unpaid domestic workers within marriage.
