ABSTRACT
Once popularly seen as a force for unprecedented social and eco nomic change in the lives of women, the role of the Second World War has undergone a revision in the last twenty years. For A rthur Marwick, writing in 1974, its impact on women ‘brings one to the heart of the whole question of whether the war brought about significant social and economic change’.1 His view was that the war emancipated women, giving them new social and economic freedoms and bringing about lasting changes to their lives. Later studies dis agree. Penny Summerfield and Harold Smith in particular show how wartime changes to wom en’s lives were only part of a tem por ary adjustm ent to an emergency and that after 1945 pre-war pat terns were restored.2 The question is no longer w hether the war brought about radical or lasting changes for women but why did it not?
