War Time Women

Looking at the involvement of Australian women in WWI and WWII through articles, photos, letter and advertisements of the time. On the home front, women dealt with the consequences of war - managing children and family responsibilities alone, shortages of resources, as well as their fears for the future, and the grief and trauma of losing loved ones. Many women were also actively involved as nurses and in other active service duties, and contributed more actively to war efforts through military service. Other Australian women were also closely connected with war through male relatives and friends away on military service. In World War II, women were actively recruited into jobs that had always been the preserve of men; they worked in factories and shipyards, as members of the Women's Land Army and as Official War Artists. Here's to all women who have lived through war - thankyou.

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Before rationing, there were Bile Beans, 1940

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1940

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Member of the Australian women's air training corp building an aeroplane wing, 1940

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5 October 1950

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Female car and ambulance drivers back from France, 1940, Miss V Burke (WA), Miss C Muggleworth (NZ) and Miss  D Howe (WA).

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1940s Illustration

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Australian Womens's Weekly

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Australian Opera singer Lorna Sydney Smith (later Baroness von Ronacher) was held as a hostage by the Nazis in Vienna while on tour, from 1939.  She was arrested six times during the war. She returned to Australia in 1947.

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March, 1945