However, Source B is more radical than A because it hints at the fact that women could the work of men whereas the woman from the women’s Institute has geared her argument more towards women taking an altruistic approach, implying that they should be taking care of their families an those they are in charge of first and foremost. Source B is also trying to get at the fact that women are not only working for the good of the country but also for the good of themselves. The speaker does this by saying that after women had worked as well as they possibly could during the war years, they should, “the ask for the conditions they are entitled to.” Having said all that, I do believe B does support A in general as they are both encouraging women to help in every way they can albeit they have different reasons and goals for doing so.
3. There are many reasons why the government produced so much food an cooking based propaganda and information during the Warm, the most glaringly obvious of which is illustrated by Source E. It is a poster called ‘Stretching Your Rations,’ its aim is to show women who have to cook in the home how to make their fairly meagre amounts of each food last an entire week. This was done because this was the first time rationing of food across the whole country had been used and many people, especially the middle classes, were unsure of how to cope with it. With food being scarce, people were also being encouraged to grow their own on every available piece of land, one very famous campaign was called, ‘Dig For Victory’. The government promoted the growth of root vegetables such as potatoes not only because they were healthy but they were also easy to produce in large numbers in Britain so they didn’t have to be imported. This had the knock on effect that fewer supply ships would be need for food and therefore more money could be pumped back into the war effort. This is hinted at in C, where it says that potatoes, “save shipping space.”
Raising morale was also a major aim of the food leaflets and adverts. Both Sources C and D show this perfectly. C, a leaflet from the Ministry of Food, mentions how, “food is a weapon of war,” in the very first sentence, telling women that they were fighting on the, “kitchen front,” just as bravely and fiercely as, “their menfolk in the services.” Although in a patronising style that was typical of the time, it shows how the women’s feelings were being taken into consideration by the government and their needs and interests were being listened to and acted upon more so than ever before. This in itself could have been morale raising for women. Source D is in a similar style to C and has the same aims although it goes about putting them across in different ways. It was produced by the government with the purpose of getting women into the spirit of the War Work, by saying there were, “Medals for Housewives.” Along with the cartoon picture of a woman with medals are several sections which include the information of the piece, “saving all the bread crusts and crumbs… for cooking,” (D).
4. The sources F and G can be used to show what the role of women at work during World War 2 was. They show the views of the women themselves, those they had to work with and how society in general saw them. Source F, which is a contemporary, popular song, describes how women were working in the factories making thousands of different parts for many different machines without complaining, saying, “It’s the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole that holds the spring… that’s gong to win the war.” It tells us how popular opinion may well have been in favour of women working in factories which was always considered a man’s job. We cannot be certain about its origins or whether or not it is a true refection of public views of the time but it certainly suggest that women were vital in wining the war. Source G, although telling us the opposite of F, is useful in that it gives us first hand evidence of what it was really like for a women to go in the countryside on the Land Army. It does imply that women were doing vital work for the country when you know that she planted potatoes for a whole year and take into account the fact that potatoes were something very highly prised by the government at the time.
However, there is one obvious point that has to be made about Sources F and G and that is the fact that they present conflicting views. Source f indicates that women were welcomed with open arms into the factories and field but Source G says the complete opposite. The woman, who actually was a Land Army girl and speaking 1983, said “the people were very resentful in the country, they didn’t make it easy for you.” These two distinct representations of how women went about their War Work make each other unreliable and therefore not very useful. Also, there are other questions over the reliability of the sources. For example, G is only one persons recollection many years after the event. She could have been the exception that proves the rule and we are not sure if she is biased in an unknown way towards the time she spent there. Without some independent evidence to back up what the woman is saying the source we can never really be sure that it is completely true. The same can be said for Source F as we have no idea of how popular it actually was, who wrote and about whom in particular. Without knowing these things neither of these sources are, I my opinion, useful enough to determine the what women’s War Work was actually like.
5. On some levels I agree that the most important role played by women during the war was in the home but on others I have to disagree. Some might say it is true that women in the home did play a major role by keeping their households and families in order because “(women) on the kitchen front have the job of using these foods to the greatest advantage,” (C). Saying that food was a weapon, as it does in Source C, is implying that women do just as much as the men on the front line and they are the most important part of any army or war as a whole and so, therefore, women must have been highly valued in the jobs they did. Another way in which it can be proved that they were highly valued is that
