Land girls
Woman's land army
WW2 has drastically changed the world of work for women. Before WW2, women would have been expected to be house wives where they would would simply cook, clean and do other "around the house" jobs. But this stereotypical view of women changed forever when the women's land army was created by the government in June, 1939. Since most of the young and fit men were out fighting in the war, the government was very concerned about the lack of food, as there wouldn't be many farmers around, and so the government decided that women should do the jobs that the men would have done, in order for there to be enough food and resources for the country to use. Initially, the government only called up single women from the age of 20-30 years, but this was simply not enough, by mid 1943, almost 90 per cent of single women and 80 per cent of married women were working in factories, on the land or in the armed forces. Many women joined up even though they did not have to, to help in the armed forces- around 640,000 women joined the armed forces, 55,000 of which helped man guns and provided essential air defence. Other jobs in the armed forces, for women, included nursing, driving and even flying planes. |
The WLA worked on supplying food, but there were many other jobs women did:
Jobs for women included
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Without women, working on the Devonshire farms and doing other jobs that wouldn't have been expected back then, who knows what would have happened to the country, but lives may have been saved by the valiant efforts performed by women in those tough times. There is no doubt that the view of women has changed greatly- nowadays, women would be allowed to do many more jobs than they would have if they hadn't proved themselves to be hard workers in WW2. Since Devon provided much needed food for the entire country, and many of the WLA workers worked on Devon, you could say that Devon helped to change the way women are viewed for the better- no longer are women viewed as the simple house wife but as independent and as determined as anyone.