Start Date
27-5-2026 9:45 AM
End Date
27-5-2026 10:00 AM
Description
As German submarines targeted merchant ships bringing food to Britain in the Second World War, home production had to be increased. During this period, the government maintained a condition of “total war,” that is, everyone was required to contribute to keeping the country going and to achieving victory. According to the historian Guy de la Bédoyère, “the British people experienced unprecedented Government intervention. Every aspect of daily life was regulated.” In theory, this push for national solidarity involved a levelling of class and gender differences. Certainly, it brought women into new prominence. When male labourers on farms, in orchards and elsewhere joined the armed forces, women replaced them under the auspices of the Women's Land Army (WLA), a First World War organisation that was revived in 1939. Mary Murphy, writing in 1941, asserted that “women ... will be sent wherever the government needs work to be done ... They will be required to leave their children with persons hired by the government ... their work will be carried on with the sound of enemy planes overhead.” This paper examines the formation of the Women's Land Army as a national body for England and Wales. It asks why women joined, how they contributed to the national effort, and how conventional notions of femininity were subverted. The paper particularly examines how the WLA was represented in visual art such as government recruitment posters, press cartoons and in paintings by the war artist, Evelyn Dunbar.
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Included in
“You are needed in the fields!”: Representing the “Land Girls” in Second World War Britain
As German submarines targeted merchant ships bringing food to Britain in the Second World War, home production had to be increased. During this period, the government maintained a condition of “total war,” that is, everyone was required to contribute to keeping the country going and to achieving victory. According to the historian Guy de la Bédoyère, “the British people experienced unprecedented Government intervention. Every aspect of daily life was regulated.” In theory, this push for national solidarity involved a levelling of class and gender differences. Certainly, it brought women into new prominence. When male labourers on farms, in orchards and elsewhere joined the armed forces, women replaced them under the auspices of the Women's Land Army (WLA), a First World War organisation that was revived in 1939. Mary Murphy, writing in 1941, asserted that “women ... will be sent wherever the government needs work to be done ... They will be required to leave their children with persons hired by the government ... their work will be carried on with the sound of enemy planes overhead.” This paper examines the formation of the Women's Land Army as a national body for England and Wales. It asks why women joined, how they contributed to the national effort, and how conventional notions of femininity were subverted. The paper particularly examines how the WLA was represented in visual art such as government recruitment posters, press cartoons and in paintings by the war artist, Evelyn Dunbar.