The complexities surrounding women’s place in post-war British society have been well documented by historians. This debate centres on whether the Second World War had a liberating effect on women or if, instead, it served to cement women’s place in the home and extenuated the delineation between men and women. Rebuilding Britain after the Second World War called on women to perform as mothers. Women had a crucial role in ensuring the future of Britain by producing children but women were also needed as workers, which made the role of women in British society ambiguous. The home was posited as the heart of British recovery and for some women the privations of the war enhanced the importance of the home and their significance in it.

Judy Giles argues that the historical moment, in this case the end of the Second World War which for several years had disrupted the traditional gender order in Britain, played a part in shaping women’s relationship to the home. In other words, as well as being the site of women’s domestic proclivities, the home was imagined as a place of stability after the chaos of wartime. Predominantly it was married women who were the targets of this discourse but single women were also under pressure to relinquish their jobs to men, as ‘the boys return home’, thus marking an end to the shared experiences of wartime’. However, despite the assumption that women’s ‘incursions into the labour market’ would be ‘tidied away’ once the war ended, young women’s labour remained an economic necessity.

Running counter to this was the threat posed to society by women who worked. In the post-war period, the promotion of marriage and motherhood as the norm meant that women who chose work over family ran the risk of becoming estranged from mainstream society. In spite of the projected idealisation of life in the home, figures show that the majority of both single and married women wished to continue working and that only a minority of women cited marriage as the reason for wishing to give up work. As Selina Todd points out, ‘paid work was a distinguishing characteristic of youth for many women’ during the postwar period and the aspirations and opportunities for young, single women differed widely from those of the married women who remain at the core of most studies. Whilst there is no evidence to suggest that a collective consciousness amongst women existed, individual women did find space to pursue their goals, confirming the opinion that not all women were ‘passive receptacles of gender ideology’ at this time. Moreover, just as postwar aspirations for an improved and modern home were linked to social advancement some women sought self-improvement through their choice of job. Personal testimonies from women who worked in Germany reveal that work was central to their lives; in fact, it was often an explicit work-related decision that led them to Germany in the first place.

Mrs Roscoe was living at home with her parents in Birmingham and working as a secretary when she responded to an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph requesting applications from women to work in British-occupied Germany. She was attracted to the post as it involved travelling and this acted as an incentive as she had never holidayed beyond Britain: ‘It was great to be abroad. I did not think I would have the chance from my background’. For Mrs Roscoe social class delineated her boundaries and rendered foreign travel unfeasible but through self-assertion she was able to divert her life from its predictable trajectory. As well as class, Mrs Roscoe’s testimony stands out as in it she directly refers to the conventions of gendered behaviour in post-war Britain and how they were challenged: ‘I was taken on by the Control Commission for Germany [C.C.G.] in August but a vacancy did not arise until January. A lot of de-mobbed women took these posts, women who did not want to settle down’. Mrs Roscoe’s account also suggests that there was an abundance of women willing to work in Germany; she had to wait until there was a vacancy as jobs for women with the C.C.G. were not readily available. This state of affairs contrasted sharply with the difficulties in recruiting suitable men to work in the British Zone in Germany.

Women took up many different positions in Germany and, whilst none of their experiences can be said to be definitive, it is apparent that many women did not regard their work as just a job. Some women constructed their work in the rhetoric of wartime unity and took up the position of patriot, which found an outlet in how well they were able to look after the men serving in Germany. Yet others related their experiences through the idiom of patriarchy, wherein the asymmetry of the office remained unchallenged but where a consummate performance brought its own rewards. For other women the British Zone acted as a site of opportunity and these ‘adventuresses’ found satisfaction in their work simply because they were living away from home.

Ruth Easingwood explores a variety of different women’s testimonies of work in post-war Germany in the Autumn edition of the Women’s History Magazine. Find out how to read more here.