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Title: Women Come and Help
Description: Before American women heard the call to join the war effort, women in the United Kingdom had been serving at home and in Europe. This recruiting poster, commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Director of Training of the Ministry of Munitions, attempted to recruit women for manufacturing jobs in the aviation industry. The poster announces that “more aeroplanes are needed,” and the comely woman dressed in work clothes in the foreground looks at her sisters from the frame, gesturing toward the airplanes and hangars that require manufacture, maintenance, and replacement. The Director of Training sought women between 18 and 35 for classes on how to make parts both for aircraft and the engines that powered them; the classes were free, and the poster notes that allowances would be paid while the women received the training. |
Classes offered included machining, welding, woodwork, and assembly. Although not stated specifically in this poster, the clear implication (and a message made clear in other materials) is that a skilled woman worker makes a direct and crucial contribution to the war effort. Clearly, women’s work efforts were being portrayed as valuable and equal to the work of men. The British War Office released a directive in April of 1917 stating that women could be employed in the Royal Flying Corps, the air arm of the British military, inaugurated in 1912. For every twenty women working on a particular job there would be a female manager, with three female managers for every forty women. Thus, women would manage women. When there were over two hundred female workers, a female general supervisor would be appointed, who would serve as a link with the larger bureaucracy. That meant that all daily work, when done by groups of women, would be supervised at every level by women. The aircraft shown, although somewhat stylized, appear to be an Airco (de Havilland) DH4 in the foreground air and a Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.7 being serviced on the ground. The DH4 was considered in many ways to be a good day bomber, except for a crucial flaw: the fuel tank was situated between the two cockpits. Not only did the increased distance between pilot and observer/bombardier/rear gunner inhibit communication, but it meant greater danger for the pilot in the event of a crash. Later models saw the tank moved to a more advantageous location. The DH4 did have a very good engine, the Rolls-Royce Eagle, an engine later dropped, then re-added to subsequent models. The R.E.7, also a bomber, had a limited production run of 250. Its manufacturer, the Royal Aircraft Factory, renamed from the Army Aircraft Factory, was incorporated into the Royal Flying Corps when King George V ordered the Corps’ creation in 1912. The Factory as part of its mandate would also provide mechanic training (as illustrated by this poster), and perform aircraft and power plant testing and repair. August of 1916, two years into the war, saw close to 350,000 women working in the UK’s war production industry, with 750,000 holding jobs (not necessarily war-related) that had been held by men. In 1917, the British government formed the “Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps”: now women could, for the first time in history, wear the British uniform and go to the Continent. Serving in such capacities as clerk, waitress, and gas mask use instructor, the women who took these duties allowed men who had been engaged in them to be freed for combat duty at the front. The women back at home working in munitions work faced numerous hardships, such as inadequate pay and dangerous working conditions (especially in the manufacture of explosives). However, it was seen to be one’s duty to serve the nation, a sentiment not directly stated in this poster’s call for help, but one that would have most likely been known to the viewer. Women’s contributions were critical to the successful prosecution of the war, and gave strength to the move for women’s suffrage, leading directly to the granting of the parliamentary vote for women over thirty in January 1918. It should be noted, though, that improvements in women’s conditions due to the war were limited mainly to the West, especially the UK and the United States. This was by no means a universal phenomenon. |
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