In a State of War: Women’s Experiences of the South Australian Home Front, 1939-45

Abstract

Using South Australia as a case study, this thesis explores how wartime constructions of gender affected the experiences of civilian women during World War II. Internationally, World War II historiography is at a crucial juncture, more likely than ever to acknowledge that the war’s social and economic effects cannot be understood without reference to gender. This thesis situates itself within this body of literature to explain how feminine norms were defined and enforced by the press, government, employers and other institutions between 1939-45, and how these shaped women’s responses and experiences of the war. It argues that wartime constructions of womanhood aimed to maintain traditional gender relations, but that sometimes women adapted these gendered expectations to make their own social, economic and personal gains. In doing so, it demonstrates the pervasiveness and power of gendered discourses, which were ubiquitous to all areas of women’s wartime lives, including their employment in civilian industries, involvement in wartime voluntary work, the regulation of their behaviour and sexuality, and in the treatment of those deemed enemy aliens. My focus on civilian women re-balances popular and academic studies that draw inordinately on the experiences of servicewomen, who, despite now dominating the public imagination of Australian women at war, constituted a small fraction of Australia’s total female population. My thesis also reveals compelling reasons to focus on South Australia. Despite rapid wartime industrialisation, it retained a highly gendered division of labour. Women’s workplace participation increased in South Australia between 1939-45, but not at a rate consonant with the popular claim that the war marked a watershed for women. Their employment in munitions factories and the Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) was frustrated by inadequate pay and substandard working conditions. Outside of work, South Australian women married and had children earlier and at a higher rate than those in other states and had a minimal presence in the state’s post-war workforce. My thesis considers why these circumstances existed and what they add to our knowledge of women’s experiences of World War II overall, illuminating the function of gender in ways that previous overviews of women on the home front have not.