ABSTRACT
The movement of women into most spheres of public life, and into all the professions, has been a defining feature of twentieth-century British society. Women in khaki, although often vital to the success of the British war effort, were widely perceived as disruptive and transgressive since they were difficult to contain within existing dominant discourses of femininity. The khaki uniform and the drill and arms training provided by the WVR all drew particular criticism, as the three aspects of the organisation which threatened most clearly the linkage between masculinity and militarism. A poem in the Womens Volunteer Reserve Magazine claimed less prosaic reasons for the organisation's use of khaki than Smethitt, using explicitly religious imagery to link the sacrifices made by female volunteers with those of the combatant man. Female conscription was considered both as a means of tackling 'slackers in petticoats' and as a way for women to demonstrate their own willingness to serve.
