Farm work was hard, and the women did all sorts of jobs including hoeing, ploughing, hedging, turning hay, lifting potatoes, threshing, lambing and looking after poultry. A thousand women were employed as rat catchers. Six thousand women worked in the Timber Corps, felling trees and running sawmills. About a quarter were employed in milking and general farm work.
The Women's Land Army had a uniform - green jerseys, brown breeches, brown felt hats and khaki overcoats. However, the Land Army was not a military force and many women did not wear the uniform. Some women lived in hostels but most lived on individual farms. Conditions were often poor and pay was low but many women enjoyed the work. The Women's Land Army remained in existence until 1950. The Women's Voluntary Services (WVS) began in June 1938 to prepare women for civil defence work. By September 1939, the WVS had 336,000 members, increasing to 1 million members during the war.
One of the main tasks of the WVS was to recruit women for Air Raid Precautions services (ARP). They also ran field kitchens and rest centres for people made homeless by bombing; provided canteens at railway stations for soldiers and sailors; escorted children being evacuated; running clothing centres for those who had lost all their possessions; operating car pools once petrol rationing was introduced; helping people salvage their personal belongings from bombed-out houses; and doing domestic work in hospitals and clinics. The WVS was also the official 'sock darner' for the Army - darning 38,000 pairs a week for British and American soldiers!
The women who joined the WVS were those with domestic responsibilities, such as looking after children or relatives, who could not join the armed forces or the Land Army, or work in a factory. Only the organisers received any payment, everybody else gave their services free. The women of the WVS even had to buy their own uniform –a grey-green tweed suit, red jumper and felt hat.
Although some of the duties of the WVS may have seemed bring, the women carried out vital war work, helping Britain to run as normal. The work could be dangerous and some members of the WVS were killed on duty. The WVS is still in existence today and is known as the Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS).
Although women had worked in factories before, there was a big increase after war broke out in 1939. As men were called-up to join the Armed Forces more and more women were needed to replace them. Women could not do the heaviest lifting jobs that still needed the greater physical strength of men and they were not sent to work in the mines but they soon proved that they could do almost any job usually undertaken by a man, and do it as well, if not better.
