ABSTRACT
It is sometimes thought that the government stepped in like a beneficent uncle during the Second World War to take over many of the domestic jobs traditionally ascribed to women, in order to release them for war work. In fact government records and women's own experiences suggest that state intervention into the domestic sphere was limited, even though it was, of necessity, greater than in the First World War. Some government departments like the Ministry of Labour, desperate to increase the labour supply, favoured more radical steps, but there was a stubborn reluctance at the heart of government to introduce any policy that would change the conventional role of women at home, even at the height of a total war. In addition, the government was actively encouraging women to enlarge their domestic role through the ‘make do and mend’ propaganda directed at the ‘housewife’. Shortages were even more acute than in the First World War, and the state depended on women to make up deficiencies in diet, clothing and comfort, an extra load for already burdened women to bear. Women's accounts of how they coped with the double burden between 1939 and 1945 echo those of the inter-war years, the First War and the years before that. Good organisation and grim determination were the hallmarks. This quote from a 40-year-old Midlands woman, mother of six, four of whom were under 12, stands for many:
I get up at 5 in the morning and get the worst of my housework done, and the children all washed and dressed, and I do the washing and get my dinner started so it'll only need a warm up in the evening. Then I go to work, and I come back at 9.30 in the evening and give them all their supper and tidy up a bit. I seem to manage. Sometimes when the alarm goes on Sunday morning I say to myself ‘I won't go today’; but then I think if everyone said that on Sunday mornings, then what would happen. And so I get up.’ 1
