NB: This image is for illustrative purpose, so the images are clearer. The set comes 2 strips of 5 stamps.
A stamp issue paying tribute to the contribution made by women to the war effort during WWII.
Until 1941, women’s work was voluntary, but the increased demands of a global war meant that female conscription was increasingly seen as necessary by the government. By the middle of 1943, most women in wartime employment, both full and part-time, were working in industry, agriculture and the women’s services. The women’s auxiliary services were established at the outset of the war: the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in 1938, and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) in 1939.
To begin with, roles in the ATS were limited to cooks, cleaners, orderlies, store women and drivers, but as the war went on these were expanded to include other duties, notably work on the anti-aircraft sites. More roles were open to women in the WAAF and the WRNS, while the ‘Spitfire women’ of the civilian Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) delivered planes to airfields around the country.
Among the volunteers were many women from the British colonies and Dominions, who served in the auxiliary and medical services. Other women worked as nurses, air raid wardens and tube and bus drivers, while over one million women volunteered with the Women’s Voluntary Services. At the war’s end, many of these roles disappeared, but women’s contribution to the war effort is commemorated by the Women of World War II memorial in central London.
Women overcame prejudice about their gender, and sometimes about the colour of their skin and their social class, to contribute to the war effort. While much of women’s war work was temporary, ‘just for the duration’ of the war, the changes brought about by their work helped to drive some of the post-war social changes that eventually saw equal opportunities and equal pay legislation. Today, the Women of World War II memorial, erected in Whitehall in 2005, reminds passers-by of the vital work, and contribution to the war effort, undertaken by nearly seven million women in Britain during the war.
