This year Worcestershire is hosting the National Women's
History Network Annual Conference which will take place at the city campus
between 5-7 of September. The theme is
Home Fronts: Gender War and Conflict, to tie in line with the WWI Commemoration
beginning this year.
There will be over 100 papers from speakers across the
world looking at the Home Front in a number of countries in the First and
Second World Wars, the English and
American Civil Wars as well as other conflicts from Ancient Rome to the Vietnam
War. There will also be the chance to
visit the Infirmary Museum, an exhibition on Worcestershire's War at the Hive,
view films and visit book stalls. I have attached a poster and the final
programme.
We have designated the Sunday as a special morning for
schools and colleges and on this day we will be waiving the conference fee to
students and teachers in the Worcestershire area. We also have some bursaries for those who
volunteer or work part-time in the heritage, museum and archive services in
Worcestershire. Please email maggie.andrews@worc.ac.uk
to enquire about these.
We do hope that you will decide to join us for at least
one of the three days.
Booking is online via
http://www.worcester.ac.uk/discover/home-fronts-gender-war-and-conflict
and closes on 30 August 2014.
Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict - Timetable
Friday
5th of September
From
11:00 Registration
Range
of potential visits and exhibitions to view including the Infirmary Museum,
Maureen Gamble’s ‘Mending: Life and Loss’ Worcestershire ‘s War at
the Hive, Also the National Trust
property Greyfriars House and Garden (£5 to non- national trust members) is
within walking distance of the
conference. Cafés in Hive, Greyfriars and on campus are open
for lunch.
1:20-1:30 Welcome
1:30-2:30:- Keynote Professor Susan –Mary Grant : University of
Newcastle - Chair Maggie Andrews
When
the Fires Burned Too Close to Home: Southern Women and the Dislocations of the
Home-front in the American Civil War
The role of women in the American Civil War is in many ways a story in
two parts, or possibly three. For Northern women, the war was largely a distant
event, its battlefields represented in static images of photographs from the
front, its horrors conveyed well enough in the many thousands of letters,
wounded men, and coffins, sent home, but its impact muted by distance, its
dislocations far removed from their daily lives. For white Southern women, by
contrast, the war was in their front yards, in their homes, many of which
served as hospitals or as headquarters for the troops, and in their gardens,
the temporary, and sometimes permanent, graveyards for the Confederate dead.
And for both black and white women, the dislocations of war were theirs,
whether they found themselves as refugees, fleeing the invading Union armies,
or as slaves, seizing the opportunities the war brought to flee toward freedom.
This paper explores this dislocated world, between home-front and battle-front,
between slavery and freedom, between the masculine military environment and the
female domestic one. Its focus is on those points where these worlds collided
in order to identify and define the collective strategies, and the implications
of these, deployed by Southern women, black and white, seeking to survive in a
world at war.
Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at
Newcastle University. She is the author of North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the
Antebellum Era (2000), The War
for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006), and The Concise History of the United States of America (CUP, 2012).
Her research explores the broader social impact of the Civil War, especially on
veterans and their families, from which she has published “‘Mortal in this season’: Union Surgeons and the
Narrative of Medical Modernisation in the American Civil War” in the Social History of Medicine (2014).
2: 30 -4:00 Parallel Sessions 3/4 papers 5 Strands
Friday 2:30-4:00
|
Refugees Chair
- Laura Ugolini
|
Politics and Organisations
|
Culture Clashes: Gender, Conflict
and Belgian Refugees in Yorkshire
Alison
Fell, University of Leeds
|
A
‘position of peculiar responsibility’: Quaker women and the relief of
refugees on home fronts in Birmingham and beyond, 1914-24.
Sian Roberts,
Library of Birmingham
|
|
Home Front« Across the Sea: Home Front Action in
WWII Refugee Camps Explored
Kornelija
Ajlec, University of Ljubljana
|
Friday 2:30-4:00
|
Politics and Westminster Chair – Rose Miller
|
Politics and Organisations
|
Ellen
Wilkinson and Home Security 1940-1945
Paula Bartley, Independent Scholar |
The
Home Front in the "Westminster Village": Women in Parliament during
the First and Second World Wars
Mari Takayanagi, Parliamentary Archives
|
|
Questioning the ‘political’ during the People’s
War
Eve Worth,
University of Oxford
|
Friday 2:30-4:00
|
Professions in WW1
Chair Susan Anderson-Faithful.
|
Work
|
Women’s
work in the First World War: Evidence from the Accountancy Profession
Jane Berney,
Independent Scholar
|
Herbs,
herbalists and the home front
Jane Adams, The Open University
|
|
‘The
professional or the patriot? Women, agency and the professions in Wales
during the First World War’
Beth Jenkins, Cardiff University
|
|
Mrs C S Peel : A Woman at Work ( 1914-1918)
Catherine Kawalek, Independent Researcher
|
Friday 2:30-4:00
|
Regional and National Stories of WW1 Chair Jody Crutchley
|
Locale and Region
|
Remembering
Scarborough
Kate Vigurs, University of Leeds
|
Lincolnshire’s
Fishermen’s Wives, Fisher Lasses and Landladies, 1914 - 1919
Katherine
Storr, Independent Scholar
|
|
The Extra-ordinariness of
Everyday Life on the Home Front: Women and Crime in Wartime Crewe, Cheshire
1914-18
David Cox,
University of Wolverhampton
|
|
More
Money, More Freedom’: British women
workers on the Home Front, 1914 to 1918
Alison Enever, University of Southampton
|
Friday 2:30-4:00
|
Fashion and Image in Wartime Chair Laura Jones
|
Culture
|
“I
Must Say, I Think It Is Extraordinarily Vulgar, To Be Wearing Bows Amidst a
Sea of Black”: Debates about Fashion and Patriotism During the U.S. Civil War
Holly Kent, University of Illinois-Springfield
|
Protecting
the Home on the Home Front – The Figure of the Prostitute during the Great
War
Laura Lammasniemi, Birkbeck College, University of
London
|
|
The
Essential Accessory: Lipstick, Femininity and Morale in Britain during World
War Two
June Rowe,
University of the Arts, London
|
|
Beauty on the Move
Donna Bevan, Southampton Solent University
|
4:00-4:30
Tea
4:30-6:15 4/5
Papers 5 Parallel Sessions
Friday 4:30-6:30
|
Sexuality and War Chair Sian Roberts
|
Culture
|
“Sexual Encounters of Women at the Home Front
in Britain and Germany in the Second World War 1939-45”
Vandana
Joshi, Humboldt
University, Berlin,
|
Florida’s
Wartime Campaign against Venereal Disease and the Women who Harbored It.
Claire Strom, Rollins
College, Florida
|
|
“Fright of sex”: Emotion and British
national identity
Hera Cook, University of Otago, Wellington
|
|
First World War as a
Fracture in Perception of Women’s Sexual Morality in Slovene imaginarium
Irena Selišnik and Ana Cergol Paradiž, Faculty
of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
|
|
The economy of emotions: German women’s illicit love
affairs with PoWs in the Second World War
Cornelie Usborne, Roehampton University, London
|
Friday 4:30-6:30
|
Everyday Life on the Home Front in WW2
Chair June Purvis
|
Domesticity and Families
|
A Good Housewife
in Wartime’ : Food Rationing and the
Construction of Femininity on the British Home Front
Kelly
Spring, University of Manchester
|
The
Daily Express and Evacuation
1939-1942
Caroline
Victoria Dale, University of Aberystwyth
|
|
Print Media and Documents of Women in Turkey during
the Second World War: roles, practices and politics
Sevgi Uçan Çubukçu, University of Istanbul
|
|
Women’s Experiences and Private Life During the
Second World War in Turkey: Marriage, Household Economics, Health, Fashion,
Entertainment (1939-1945)
Aynur Soydean Erdmemir, Istanbul University
|
|
“There
was only temporary relief from tiredness”– Women’s embodied memories of work
during the 2nd Word War in Finland
Kirsi-Maria Hytönen, University of Jyväskylä,
Finland
|
Friday 4:30-6:15
|
Work in WW2 Chair
Dianne Newell
|
Work
|
Gender
and Civil Defence during the Second World War in Britain
Jessica Hammett,
University of Sussex
|
“It’s because we’re
just women”; Female reflections of the self in the workplace during the
Second World War
Daniel Swan, University of Portsmouth
|
|
‘Tid’apa’? British Women on the Home Front in Malaya
and Singapore, 1939-42
Bridget Deane, University of West of England
|
|
‘A Matter of Life and Death: Constructing RAF Combat Masculinity on
the Home Front’
Jack Doyle, University of Oxford
|
Friday 4:30-6:00
|
Women’s Organisations in WW1 Chair Kate Murphy
|
Politics and Organisations
|
Conflict on the Australian Home Front: The Women’s Peace Army and Women’s Loyal Service Bureau
Wendy Michaels, University of
Newcastle, New South Wales
|
Feminist
Peace Activism during the Great War: The British section of the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915 – 1919
Sarah Hellawell,
University of Northumbria
|
|
‘This
Righteous War’: religious agendas and patriotic activism in the Anglican
Mothers’ Union and Girls’ Friendly Society on the home front 1914-18
Sue Anderson- Faithful, University of
Winchester
|
Friday 4:30-6:30
|
Eastern European Home Fronts Chair
Paula Bartley
|
Locale and
Region
|
Everyday lives and duties of Polish women in the
rural provinces of the eastern Polish land during World War I
Malgorzata Dajnowicz,
University of Bialystok
|
We have to do
everything that strong and loving mothers are able to do for the nation!” Protection
of women and their children in wartime Hungary
Dóra Czeferner, University of Pécs
|
|
Lithuanian Women during World War I:
Activities and Aspirations
Virginija Jureniene, Vilnius University
|
|
Confronting
the front: shedding light upon the civilian population
Urška
Strle, Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
|
|
‘An
Ambassador’s Daughter in War and Revolution: Russia, 1914-1918’
Jane McDermid, University of Southampton
|
6:30
Routledge Sponsored Reception awarding
of WHN Prizes and accordion music
followed by Drama
- F.A.N.Y Anonymous is a Woman - Leila Sykes
Saturday
6th September
9:30 -11:00 Parallel Sessions 3/4 papers 5 Strands
Saturday 9:30-11:00
|
Women’s Work in WW1 Chair Jane Adams
|
Work
|
‘The Welsh
girls are good fighters’: social relations, female activism and women’s
experiences of work in munitions factories in Wales during the First World
War
Thomas
George, Cardiff University
|
‘Here
come the girls!’ The Origins of the Women Volunteers at the Army Pay Office
Woolwich from August to October 1914
John Black, Independent Scholar
|
|
Birmingham Women Remember:
War-Work and the Home Front during the First World War.
Jo-Ann Curtis, Birmingham Museums Trust
|
Saturday 9:30-11
|
Merging the Home and War Fronts Chair
Alison Fell
|
Politics
and Organisations
|
The Female POW: From 8 Hours to Four Years
Mary Raum, CIV
NAVWARCOL
|
“When the Home Front is the War Front: Non-Combatant Women in Wartime
South Vietnam”
Amanda
Chapman Boczar, University of Kentucky
|
|
Lotta Svärd Organisation on the Home
Front in Finland, 1939-1944
Seija-Leena
Nevala-Nurmi, University of Tampere, Finland
|
|
|
Women Messages in French Post-Cards during WW1: A Visual, Textual, and
Contextual Analysis
Caroline Perret - University of Westminster
|
Saturday 9:30 – 11
|
Education and Youth Chair
David Doughan
|
Politics and
Organisations
|
Civilian fathers and servicemen
sons in the English middle classes, 1914-18
Laura Ugolini,
University of Wolverhampton
|
“Responsibility,
Duty, Sympathy and Self-Sacrifice”: Empire and Elementary School Curricula on
the Home-Front, 1914-1918
Jody Crutchley, University of Worcester
|
|
The Boy’s Historian’: Mobilizing from the Colonial Home Front to
Modelling Empire-Builders
Laura Jones, University of Worcester
|
|
Goodbye Trabzon Hello Istanbul: Anatolia
from the Diary of a Young Girl
Stefan Hock, Georgetown University
|
Saturday 9:30-11
|
Army Wives and Widows Chair Linda McGuire
|
Domesticity
and Families
|
The fashioning of the bereavement narratives of the
widows of parliamentarian military officers during the British Civil Wars
Andrew Hopper, University of Leicester
|
“Your
petitioner lost not only her husband...”: Royalist widows as guardians of
their family estates during the Civil Wars and Interregnum
Hannah Worthen, University of Leicester & The
National Archives
|
|
Waging War on the Home Front? Marital Physical
Conflicts in Early Modern London
Loreen L.
Giese, Ohio University
|
Saturday 9:30 -11
|
Culture, Literature and Music in WW2 and beyond Chair Holly Kent
|
Culture
|
Fictional
Geographies of Safety and Cleanliness in House-Bound
by Winifred Peck, (1942)
Jackie Kyte, Birkbeck College, University of
London
|
Fig for the Morrow I'll Sing to the End: Survival
during internment by the Japanese in Sumatra, WW2
Barbara Coombes,
Independent scholar
|
|
“Never
truly feminine.” Challenges to dominant discourses of female identity during
the Second World War in the poetry of Lotte Kramer and Alice Coats.
Geraldine
Roberts-Stone, Edge Hill University
|
|
American
Home Front Away from Home: Judith Merril’s Broadcast Journalism in Toronto
During the Vietnam War, 1968-1975.
Dianne Newell, University of British Columbia and
Victoria Lamont, University of Waterloo Canada
|
11:00 – 11:15
Coffee/ Tea Break
11:15-12:15 Keynote
: Professor Karen Hunt
: University of Keele - Chair
Anne Logan
Gendering
the Local Home Front (1914 -19)
Histories of
life in wartime tend to focus on the extraordinary and the unusual; the
remembered; and what was new or different. This applies to all modern war but
especially to what many see as the first truly ‘modern’ war, the Great War.
However, if we change our focus to the everyday, the banal and often forgotten
details of daily life, we may find that continuities are as important as
changes. This is particularly the case when we consider the home front.
Everyday life had to go on, despite the challenges, privations and sorrows of
this new kind of ‘total’ war. Yet it is clear that whichever combatant nation
one looks at, there was a diversity of experience on the home front dependant
on place – hence local home fronts – but also on class, on age, and
particularly on gender. And that these experiences varied over time. In order
to understand how place (the city, the suburb, the town, the village) shaped
everyday experience on the home front, this lecture will draw on examples from
across and beyond Britain. It will ask how everyday life on local home fronts
challenged or reinforced existing gender relations, and whether this had any
lasting effect beyond the peculiar circumstances of wartime.
Karen Hunt is
Professor of Modern British History at Keele University and is currently Head
of Humanities Research at Keele, as well as Chair of the Social History Society
(2014-17). Her publications cover many aspects of the gendering of politics
(locally, nationally and transnationally) particularly from the 1880s to 1939,
including Equivocal Feminists (1996) and Socialist Women (2002)(with June
Hannam). Her current research juggles a number of intersecting interests: the
life and politics of Dora Montefiore; interwar women’s politics, focusing on
the local and the everyday; and women and the politics of food in the First
World War. She is an advisor to the AHRC/BBC World War One at Home project in
the West Midlands.
This keynote is
sponsored by the Voices of War and Peace and AHRC funded WWI Hub http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org
12:15-1:00 Parallel Sessions 2 papers
5 Strands
Saturday 12:15-1:00
|
Violence
and Survival. Chair Maggie Andrews
|
Domesticity and Families
|
Victims or survivors: army wives in Ireland during
the Crimean War 1854-6
Paul Huddie,
Queens University Belfast
|
Two English Scripts of Ravishment : Divisions
between Royalist an Parliamentarian Utilization of Rape
Talya Houseman, Brown University, USA
|
Saturday 12:15-1:00
|
WW2 Rationing Chair Catherine Kawalek
|
Domesticity and Families
|
‘A little extra’:
Women and rationing in Glasgow, 1939-54.
Hayley Cross, University of Glasgow
|
Home Front Diaries: Over Representations of the
Chattering Classes?
Elspeth
King, University of Worcester
|
Saturday 12:15-1:00
|
Island Narratives Chair Jody Crutchley
|
Locale and Region
|
Wait,
watch – and work: ‘business as usual’ for Shetland’s women in the war
Linda Riddell,
Edinburgh University
|
Class,
politics and gender: the Irish home front during the First World War
Fionnuala Walsh, Trinity
College Dublin
|
Saturday 12:15-1:00
|
Suffrage and War
Chair Thomas George
|
Politics and Organisations
|
Votes,
Wages and Milk: the East London Federation of Suffragettes on the Home Front,
1914-1916
Sarah Jackson, Independent Scholar |
'Chrystal
Macmillan and the enemy women on the Home Front'
Helen Kay,
Independent Scholar
|
Saturday 12:15-1:00
|
Politics and Organisations in WW1 Chair
Daniel Swan
|
Politics and Organisations
|
Inventing the British Home
Front: Women’s Self-Militarisation in Prewar and First World War Britain
Krisztina Robert, University of
Roehampton
|
Home
and Away: Gender and Politics in First World War Tunbridge Wells
Anne Logan,
University of Kent
|
1-2
Lunch
1:45 onwards Guided Tours of Infirmary building –
please book at the registration desk.
1:45 -3:15 Film
Screenings On
the Border Dir. Lizzie Thynne, University of Sussex
This 56 minute documentary is a daughter’s
exploration of her Finnish family’s history prompted by the letters, objects,
and photographs left in her mother's apartment; produced in the UK in 2012.
1:45 - 3:15 Film
Screening by North East Film Archive of
material from WW1
2:00
- 3:15 :
WHN AGM
3:15-4:15
Keynote Deborah Thom, University of Cambridge - Chair Jenni Waugh
Revisiting the history of
the public history of women and war
War created
instant history from 1916 and ever since the history of women and the First
World War has been a synonym for thinking about a distinctive female
contribution, about the politics of gender and the cultural and social history
of war. Looking again at the history is a way of thinking about sources and
methods, thinking again about how far historians 'disturb the ground on which
they stand' or how far they build new memorials to the past.
Deborah Thom has taught history at Robinson College
Cambridge for 27 years to social scientists, historians and students of History and Philosophy of
Science. Her PhD and major book are on
women's work and the First World war and she has researched and published on feminism, education, child
psychology and family. She is currently
writing a book about corporal punishment in 20th century Britain and is a member of the academic advisory
board for the Imperial War Museum gallery
on the First World War.
4:15-4:45 Tea
4:45-6:30 Parallel Sessions 3/4 papers 4 Strands
Saturday 4:45-6:30
|
Women’s Organisations in WW2 Chair
Phillida Bunkle
|
Politics and Organisations
|
Caring for those left behind: The
work of the Huddersfield Prisoner of War Committee, 1940-1946
Barbara Hately,
University of Sheffield
|
From pacifism to a new world order:
the Women’s Co-operative Guild and the home front in Britain, 1939-45
Peter
Gurney, University of Essex
|
|
‘For Home and Country’: shifting
relations of power around gender amongst housewives associations during the
Second World War
Caitríona Beaumont, London South Bank University
|
|
'Women wanted for Evacuation Service':
Government Policy and the work of the Women's Voluntary Service (WVS)
during the Second World War
June
Balshaw University of Greenwich
|
Saturday 4:45-6:30
|
Home Fronts in Africa Chair Elspeth King
|
Locale and Region
|
‘Families by Thousands, Far Too Proud
to Beg or Speak’: Supporting British Servicemen’s Dependents during the South
African War (1899-1902)
Eliza
Riedi, School of History, University of Leicester
|
‘Still
wives, mothers, helpmeets, divorcees, widows and workers’: white women’s
experiences of the home front during Rhodesia’s liberation struggle c.1970-1980
Kate Law, Centre for Africa Studies, University of
the Free State.
|
|
The
experience of white South African women during the Second World War
Jean Smith,
University of California, Santa Barbara
|
Saturday 4:45-6:30
|
Art, Conflict and War Chair Laura Jones
|
Culture
|
Narrating
Absence: The First World War through the lens of Florence Camm's stained
glass memorial windows
Elaine
Williams, University of Birmingham
|
Visual propaganda? a
study of elite women's portraits in an era of 'crisis'
Helen Ackers, Wolfson
College, Oxford University
|
|
Women artists in the Spanish
Pavilion of the International Exhibition in 1937
Carmen
Gaitán Salinas, Instituto de Historia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, Madrid
|
|
Wrens
in Camera: The Silent Service looks back through the photography of Lee
Miller
Janet
Harrison, University of Worcester
|
Saturday 4:45-6:15
|
Literature and Music in WW1 Chair
Kate Vigurs
|
Culture
|
Identity and the Home Front in A.T. Fitzroy’s Despised and Rejected
Nadine Tschacksch,
University
of Cambridge
|
“She
must hold the center of the stage and the reins of power”: Classical Female
Models in Les Vaillaintes by Léon Abensour and The Living Present by
Gertrude Atherton
Philippa Read, University of Leeds
|
|
Women in classical music on the
British Home Front during the First World War
Jane
Angell, Royal Holloway, University of London
|
7:30 Conference Dinner
Sunday
7th September
9:45 Coffee / Tea and pastries
Parallel Sessions 3/4
papers 5 strands
Sunday 10:15 -12
|
Domestic Lives in World War I and 2 Chair Elspeth
King
|
Domesticity and Families
|
“For
County and Country: United States Homemakers and Rural Home Fronts during
World War II”
Caelin Niehoff, Newberry Library of Chicago
|
Housewives of the Home Front:
Testimonies from Wartime Diaries (1939-1945)
Natacha
Chevalier, University of Sussex
|
|
“From
Colonial Widow to Imperial War Hero: Madge Watt and the Beginning of the
Women’s Institutes”
Linda Ambrose, Laurentian University, Canada
|
|
Keep
the home fires burning……..
Paul Cleave, University of Exeter
|
Sunday 10:15 -12
|
Nursing and Medical Histories Chair
Mark Macleod
|
Work
|
Medical
Missionary Women on the Home Front in the First and Second World Wars
Sarah Jane Bodell, University of Warwick
|
‘And
they say women could do our work!’: The impact of medical dilution on the
gendering of the British Home Front in the First World War
Jessica Meyer, University of Leeds
|
|
'Angels or citizens: caring for
the wounded on the home front '
Susan
Cohen, Parkes Institution, University of Southampton
|
|
Sustaining
British Women’s Hospitals for Women in War and Peace
Phillida
Bunkle, Kings College, London
|
Sunday 10:15 -12
|
Home Fronts in the Classical Period Chair Jane Berney
|
Locale and Region
|
Sticks and stones: defending house and home in an ancient Greek siege
Aimee Schofield, University of
Manchester
|
Waiting
Wives and False Reports: The Home Front in Fifth-Century BC Athens
Erika Weiberg, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill
|
|
“Your courage is beyond
belief”: expected behaviour of Roman women during civil conflict
Linda McGuire, Independent Researcher
|
Sunday 10:15 -12
|
Home Fronts Beyond
WW2 Chair Hera Cook
|
Locale and Region
|
Forgotten
Agents in a Forgotten Home Front: German Women under French Occupation in
Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1949
Katherine Rossy, Queen Mary University of London
|
Homefront
continued? Marriage crisis and divorces after WW2 in Austria
Waltraud
Schuetz, European University Institute, Italy
|
|
Laboratory Wives and Test Site
Widows: Cold War Women of Los Alamos
Lee Chambers, University of Colorado, USA
|
|
‘Waiting
is the women’s role’. The Falklands War (1982) the ‘Home Front’.
Victoria Woodman, University of Portsmouth
|
Sunday 10:15-12
|
Media and Sport Chair Mehreen Miza
|
Culture
|
“An undoubted
success”: Women, Work and the BBC in the Second World War
Kate
Murphy, University of Bournemouth
|
“Even the
world of sport suffered a feminine invasion”: Women's sport in Second World
War Britain
Raf
Nicholson, Queen Mary, University
of London
|
|
Portraying the Homemaker on the Home
Front : Housewives and Mothers in WW2 Film
Maggie
Andrews, University of Worcester
|
12-1 Keynote Dr Lisa Pine, South Bank University - Chair Paddy McNally
German
Women and the Home Front in the Second World War
This paper will
examine six themes, which together encompass many of the key aspects of life on
the home front for German women during the Second World War. First, it will
address food and consumption - in particular, the availability of foodstuffs,
rationing and its impact. Second, and closely related to this, it will consider
the way in which women contended with food shortages by turning to the black
market and ‘hamstering’. Third, it will discuss Nazi propaganda and education
initiatives aimed at women during the war - such as the ‘struggle against waste’,
how to cook appetising dishes with limited foodstuffs, how to collect herbs and
leaves and their uses. Fourth, it will look at clothing - in particular, the
shortage of material and the need for mending. Fifth, it will discuss women and
work during the war. Hitler was concerned about keeping up popular morale on
the home front and therefore much consideration went into when and how German
women were going to be obliged to work for the war effort. Women were called up
for wartime labour service comparatively late, in 1943. This created a double
burden for women, both in industrial and urban areas and in the countryside, as
women had to undertake work in the cities or run their farms, as well as to
continue their familial and household duties. The call up of women to war work
was inconsistent, however, and they benefited from the import of some 7 million
foreign labourers, which allowed the opportunity for many German women to evade
work duties. Lastly, this paper will discuss the impact of Allied bombing in
the cities on women's lives. Children were evacuated to the countryside and
women had to cope with their utility services being cut or their homes being
destroyed. A consideration of all these aspects of life on the home front will
illustrate the impact of the Second World War on German women's lives.
Lisa Pine is
Reader in History at London South Bank University. She is a graduate of the
Department of International History at the London School of Economics and
Political Science and obtained her doctorate from the University of London in
1996. Her major publications include: Education in Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2010);
Hitler’s ‘National Community’: Society and Culture in Nazi Germany (London,
2007); Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1997).
1:00 Lunch
2: 00 – 5:00 optional trip to Stanbrook Abbey for
tea and tour (20 - 30 places £12)
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