Women,
Sexuality and War
Philomena Goodman
New York: Palgrave, 2002.
$65.00, 180 pages, ISBN 0-333076086-7 (hardback).
Wendy O’Brien
Central Queensland University
In his foreword to Goodman’s text David H. J. Morgan points out
that for the most part the public representations and stories of war
“are the stories of men and their deeds and sufferings”
[xi]. This symbolic and material marginalisation of women’s experiences
of war is countered by Goodman’s emphasis on women’s oral
histories. In an effort to redress conventional history’s discursive
and representational elision of women’s involvement in the Second
World War, Goodman declares: “it was a woman’s war too”
[4].
During the Second World War women negotiated their lives through the
perils and opportunities of a fractured gender time and space. Their
stories can be held to reveal her-stories of a different kind of heroism,
a heroism which encompassed the struggle by many women to make their
lives count, to contribute to the war effort and to maintain the objectives
they believed in. Women may not have seen their actions as heroic
but as active citizens they deserve a place in history. [163]
Goodman’s cultural history draws on advertising and magazine
images, oral histories presented as snippets of personal conversation,
and archival materials (primarily union or government records) to
offer a sweeping view of the roles and representations of British
women during the years of WWII. The image that emerges from this eclectic
assemblage of sources is one of broad brush strokes. There are certain
areas in which Goodman offers little texture or detail, for instance,
the section entitled “Women’s Welfare” touches only
briefly on issues of poverty, venereal disease, unwanted pregnancy,
abortion, health and prostitution. Although these issues did not figure
largely the text provides an effective critique of the ideologies
and institutions that served to both constrain and fleetingly liberate
twentieth century women in the complex context of war.
Goodman maintains that the spatial shifts and the temporal constraints
of WWII were contradictory in their outcomes, offering many women
the opportunity to “colonise” male spaces despite institutionalised
moves to curb women’s independence, sexual freedom and expression
of identity. Mobilised by discourses of patriotism, sexually charged
advertising campaigns, conscription, economic or physical necessity,
women were called to “arms” in a variety of different ways.
As caterers, pilots, bomb plotting specialists, labourers of the Land
Army, hostesses of evacuees, “munitions girls”, or factory
and industry workers like the iconic American “Rosie the Riveter”
; women’s contribution to the war effort cannot be underestimated.
In fact, it is not accurate to imply that this effort has been entirely
overlooked by historical or cultural accounts of WWII. While Goodman
is “giving voice” to those women whose experiences form
part of this gendered war contribution, there are other significant
sources that have foregrounded these issues previously. Goodman draws
on the prior works of Lynne Segal, Cynthia Enloe and Susan Gubar,
yet finds a space for her own work by drawing primarily on the reminiscences
of WWII women in her oral histories.
Spatial concerns permeate the text and Goodman constantly emphasises
the opportunities and attendant backlash associated with shifts in
the gendered dynamic of the public and private spheres. In her reading
of conditions in the workplace, the front line and the home front,
Goodman emphasises the strict (and contradictory) expectations placed
upon women in maintaining their femininity and domesticity. The ideological
weight of this expectation of private sphere decorum was reiterated
constantly in magazine images as well as government, workplace and
union policies governing women’s dress, leisure time and sexual
behaviour in particular.
The argument that Goodman reiterates in each of the chapters here
is that although the presence of women in the public sphere was largely
regarded as risky in that it might undermine heterosexuality and encourage
female promiscuity, women’s foray into the public sphere was
legitimised (with restrictions) because it was only for the duration.
Goodman argues persuasively that the industrial work that women undertook
was constantly represented as domesticity, a reminder of the inevitable
and forced return of women to their rightful roles in the private
sphere following the war:
The gendered operations of the labour market were and remain organised
around the sex typing of work and space. Women’s war work was
likened to housework, images of knitting, icing a cake, cutting bread
emphasised the domestic character of the work which was contained
for the duration only. [25]
Goodman persistently interrogates the discourses and institutions
that were regulating feminine identity as a means of perpetuating
ideologies of masculine strength, protectiveness and heterosexual
virility. The fact that women in the ATS were responsible for guiding
searchlights and guns toward targets yet prohibited from firing these
weapons provides an indication of the seriousness with which mythologies
of masculine and feminine protector/nurturer roles were safeguarded.
The text labours these points of contradiction where women are drawn
into public sphere roles by the necessities of war and yet allocated
ancillary positions and underpaid for their work. It is in these contradictory
spaces that Goodman identifies the strength of individual women and
men in negotiating gender roles; “hegemonic notions of patriotic
femininity were not passively accepted” [28].
Despite the focus on these heteronormative gender roles, one of the
limitations of Goodman’s study here is that it does not afford
the space for a study of lesbian sexualities, either within the forces,
the factory work environment or on the home front. For the most part
Goodman dwells on the working conditions and leisure options for working-class
or middle-class married or heterosexual single women in relatively
urban centres. Class is constantly foregrounded, and Goodman directs
careful attention to the specificities of experience; yet race, sexual
preference and the conditions for aged women were not considered in
the study. What is more, the women’s peace movement, and politicised
female or feminist action (with the exception of unionism) are overlooked,
and two major arenas of women’s war work, the Land Army and the
significant numbers of front line nurses, are also only dealt with
summarily. The dust jacket, however, does indicate that Goodman is
currently researching the experiences of British nurses on the front
line in WWII.
Goodman cautions against accounts that either demonise or unreservedly
celebrate the wartime increase of women in the workforce and public
sphere. She reminds us that there were significant numbers of women
working in industry prior to the war, and that, as Penny Summerfield
argues, there has been a significant overstatement of the social levelling
for which women’s war work relations are commonly credited. [49]
Although Goodman maintains that the contradictory spatial shifts of
the Second World War allowed women to negotiate their own spaces she
concedes “the idea of women transgressing so-called normal gender
boundaries was, and has been, overstated” [17]. This is a relevant
point, as to celebrate these struggles as transgressions is
to continue the elision of experience in the interests of neatly packaged
and ideologically simple histories. Many of the material and ideological
struggles that Goodman details are ongoing, and although Goodman’s
text doesn’t (and perhaps can’t) fully address the myriad
specificities of women’s histories, Women, Sexuality and
War does broaden the scope of Second World War storytelling.
