ABSTRACT
For women, uniform had become the desirable symbol of allegiance to an ideal cause. It had been adopted by the private organisations, although in almost all cases it represented the voluntary commitment of one individual to another or, as with nurses, a public acknowledgement of a private duty. The uniforms worn by women from 1917, when the first of the women’s services was formed, still contained these elements, but in addition came the public recognition of a personal duty which as citizens they owed to the state. The enthusiasm of middle- and upper-class women for military-style uniforms resulted from their own class assumptions about the social composition of the armed forces. Experience proved that voluntary and seasonal work fragmented the effort to make the land more productive. This state of affairs was heightened by the increasing shortage of male labour as established workers left to join the army.
