ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the work of the home service women between the wars, their continued efforts to develop and uphold a professional identity and their contributions to social welfare campaigns aimed at child welfare, housing and nutrition. The job of cookery demonstrator, the first position open to women in the gas industry, remained an important aspect of their home service duties. Although the equality feminists did not oppose the reform measures, they believed that, by focusing on maternal issues, the new feminists reinforced traditional notions of sexual difference and female essentialism. After the war and women's partial enfranchisement, however, the popular vision of social reconstruction presented by politicians, intellectuals and the media stressed a return to pre-war social relations and traditional sex roles, but with a slight difference. The lady demons had developed their own code of feminine professional conduct and successfully proven their managerial skills during World War I.
