Damned Whores and God's Police

by Anne Summers

  The mobilisation of women into active service

  After only a few years of this post-Depression drive to reassert the more restricted female role of homemaker, the outbreak of the Second World War demanded a renewed mobilisation of women. In 1941 the three armed forces all formed women’s services and began to recruit women for active service. The RAAF was the first of the forces to employ women full-time on work formerly done by men, and the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force decided to recruit 20 000 women.87 The Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service and the Australian Women’s Army Service were established and began recruiting shortly afterwards. The WRAAF provided women with the greatest scope of skilled employment, enabling them to work as aircraft mechanics, X-ray technicians, meteorological assistants, instrument repairers and at similar trades, but all the services gave woman telegraphic operator and signalling and driving jobs as well as the more traditional female jobs involving cooking, cleaning and sewing.

  The ranks and rates of pay for women in all services were fairly similar.88 There was, however, a great disparity between the rates of pay and entitlements given to men and those awarded to women. Servicewomen received approximately 66 per cent of the male rate or, if under 21 years of age, only 57 per cent; under-age men enlisting in any of the forces were entitled to adult pay from the start. Both men and women received similar entitlements in the form of coupons, clothing and free medical and dental treatment. But single men were entitled to claim a dependent’s allowance if they had someone dependent on them, whereas women – married or single – who had dependents, were unable to claim such an allowance.89 A further instance of discrimination was the double standard applied to the sexual behaviour of male and female service personnel. Unless a servicewoman who got pregnant was able to procure a quick and safe abortion, and thus prevent the authorities from discovering her condition, she was dishonourably discharged. Commenting on this, one woman character in the wartime novel, Come in Spinner, expostulated, ‘I can never see why, when they regard V.D. as an occupational disease for men in the army, they shouldn’t regard pregnancy for servicewomen in the same light’.90

  Between 1939 and 1941 the war was something most Australian women could ignore: the more patriotically inclined could enlist in one of the services but a war in Europe did little to impinge on the daily lives of those who had no sons, fathers or brothers in the AIF. In December 1941, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour and, one month later, its invasion of the Malay peninsula dramatically altered this. The possibility of an invasion of Australia existed and drastic measures were taken to put the country in a state of readiness. The National Security Act of January 1942 provided for the mobilisation of all available labour, male and female, into the workforce and instituted a system of ‘essential’ and ‘reserved’ industries; all inessential industries and occupations were to be phased out and the government was to control industry and production. These Manpower regulations decreed:

  that the resources of man power and woman power in Australia shall be organized and applied in the best possible way to meet the requirements of the defence forces and the needs of industry in the production of munitions and maintenance of supplies and services essential to the life of the community.91

  The prime minister, John Curtin, gave assurance that the mobilisation of women into industry was only ‘for the duration’, that he would prevent the erosion of men’s jobs by the encroachment of ‘cheap female labour’ and that all women occupying what were traditionally ‘men’s jobs’ would be replaced by men as soon as possible.

  A Women’s Employment Board was set up in April under the National Security Regulations and its job was to regulate the wages of women working in jobs previously undertaken by men, or jobs that had not been done before and for which there was no award wage. The mass movement of women into industry had created great confusion about what wages they should be paid: those working in traditionally female jobs, such as the clothing trade, still received the pre-war 54 per cent of the male basic wage, but unions feared the undermining of male wages if women in men’s jobs received so little. Many unions pressed for equal pay in these industries in order to safeguard the jobs (and the higher wages) for men. The Women’s Employment Board’s first judgement awarded women in some sections of the metal trades 60 per cent of the male rate for the first month and 90 per cent thereafter, and provided for juveniles to receive equal pay.92

  But the board’s functioning was disrupted by the Opposition, which used its majority in the Senate to disallow the regulations that had established the board; and by the Associated Chamber of Manufactures, which refused to send a representative to the board, claiming that it violated the principles of the Arbitration Court. After a protracted political struggle between these three bodies, the government threatened to dissolve both Houses of Parliament unless the Women’s Employment Bill, which reconstituted the board, was passed.93 The board eventually had jurisdiction over about 70 000 women and most of them were awarded 90 per cent of the male rate in the occupation concerned, although in a few occupations – notably clerical work, tram conducting, car driving and certain retailing and manufacturing jobs – they received 100 per cent.94

  Women were also induced to volunteer for the rural army. The Australian Women’s Land Army, formed in October 1942, aimed at having ‘a trained mobile force of 10,000 women rural workers’. The war in the Pacific and the arrival of American troops in Australia had led to shortages of food, especially of fruit, vegetables and beef. The Women’s Land Army was employed in mixed farming, sheep, dairy and poultry work, growing asparagus, beet and other vegetables, on picking, pruning and spraying in orchards, in bee-keeping, flax- and tobacco-growing and driving tractors, trucks and other farm equipment. They were issued with uniforms, sent to a farm, which was required to provide them with accommodation, and they were subjected to discipline if they refused to accept a posting or went absent without leave.95 The women were sent to do farm-work only, but as they generally lived in with the farming family, ‘it is often difficult for them to avoid doing part of the housework, which would not be expected of a man and which makes too great a burden’.96

  As with the First World War, this war generated a large number of voluntary bodies in which women did unpaid work. This time, however, they were expected to do more than knit socks. Bodies like the Red Cross, the Country Women’s Association, the Australian Comforts Fund and the Red Cross Letter Service may have continued the traditional forms of voluntary work, but other groups, such as the Women’s Australian National Services, Women’s Air Training Corps Air Raid Precautions, National Emergency Services and a host of others required women to acquire specific skills and to use them. The Women’s Australian National Services, for instance, had Aviation, Signalling, Civil and Quasi-Defence units; its members had to undergo training to reach the specified standards of their particular unit and once they qualified they were entitled to wear a uniform.

  The extent and nature of women’s participation in the Second World War was radically different from anything that had been permitted to them before. By March 1944, there were 49 000 women in the services and 3000 in the Australian Women’s Land Army.97 The number of women in employment had risen by about 35 per cent from 644 000 in 1939 to 855 000 in 1944.98 Just how many were engaged in voluntary work could probably not even be estimated. Women were doing men’s jobs and were acquiring skills and earning high wages in a way that had never previously been open to them. Child-minding facilities were provided by specially trained corps from the Australian Women’s National Service. Many women experienced a degree of freedom and mobility that was refreshingly new, and even though it occurred within an overall atmosphere of anxiety and fear about those fighting overseas, and worry about how safe the country actually was from invasion, nevertheless those years gave a great many women a feeling of emancipation.

  The ‘Yankee invasion’

  Another factor contributing to this was the presence of large numbers of Am
erican servicemen in Australia. They were stationed, or sent on leave, to most cities and several large country towns. Their presence was referred to, often sarcastically or bitterly, as the ‘Yankee invasion’. The Americans had plenty of money and access to a whole range of goods, such as cigarettes, chocolates, alcohol, nylon stockings and expensive and well-cut clothes, which the austerity measures imposed in Australia made scarce or impossible to obtain. Their free spending meant that they received good service: taxis would ignore Australian servicemen if a bunch of Yanks hailed them, hotels would ensure a good table and the best food, they had their own all-night bars and clubs to which they could take guests, and even special brothels catering only for Americans. A great many Australian women, married and single, were literally swept off their feet by the Americans who treated them to dating and courtship rituals that were practically unheard of in Australia. The Americans could afford to, and did, buy the favour of Australian women with gifts of orchids, perfume, stockings, cigarettes and other rare commodities, but they also provided a style of entertainment and of flattering women that most Australian women had never before experienced. All this caused a great deal of bitterness and resentment among Australian men. Such gestures and compliments and protestations were regarded as unnecessary or even unmanly by most Australian men for whom the displaying of emotions was akin to running naked through the streets. Between 10 000 and 12 000 Australian women married American servicemen during the war99 (compared with only about 4000 Australian servicemen who married while serving overseas), but a great many more had serious affairs or went along with them for ‘a good time’.

  Especially vulnerable to the charm and big spending of the Yanks were young girls for whom the war did not mean emancipation but merely a form of slavery in factories. The Manpower Regulations empowered the Director General of Manpower to direct all unemployed persons to accept employment; and after the March 1942 nationwide registration of all British subjects of both sexes over the age of 16, the government had a record of all available persons in order to be able to determine the best deployment of workers. Later that year an order went out that all single women who were not gainfully employed and who refused to take jobs in essential industry or to enlist in the women’s military or civilian services, were to be conscripted into essential employment.100 In practice, the single girls most likely to be so conscripted were those poor or working-class girls who did not have fathers with the connections to get them an exemption. For the daughters of such influential men, the war years consisted of a whirl of parties with officers, with perhaps a few hours a week devoted to helping out at the Red Cross. But girls without such connections were subject to industrial conscription, which meant being drafted into a form of work that had been impossible to fill with volunteers. Inevitably these were the dreariest of the traditional female jobs where the pay, especially for a juvenile, was a pittance, the hours were long and the work monotonous and enervating.

  The Americans provided a wonderful opportunity to escape from all of this: a girl could shelter within the big-spending largesse, live from party to party and, especially if she was young and attractive, have no trouble in finding a bed to sleep in each night. Many girls engaged in a similar form of semi-prostitution to that which occurred, especially in Sydney, when the Americans came back during the Vietnam War. During the Second World War, however, there was the difference that Manpower authorities were on the alert for girls evading conscription and they were empowered to question girls seen with Americans, ask for their workcards and, if these could not be produced, detain them. The girls were subjected to compulsory virginity and VD tests and if evidence was provided to suggest they had been prostituting themselves, they were sent to a reformatory. Kylie Tennant in her novel about wartime Sydney described the arrest of one such girl: ‘She had had a wonderful life of orchids, expensive dresses, a fur coat, an engagement ring, presents and parties. Now it was reduced to “sexual intercourse”, with a smell of prophylactics and clinics, blood-tests, talk of Wassermanns, slides and Sigh Phillis’.101 The same situation occurred in Come in Spinner where it evinced an understanding response from an older woman: ‘What do you expect a girl to do when she only gets a bit over a quid a week and pays ten bob for her room and can’t even make a cuppa tea in it?’102

  How the war affected women

  Norman MacKenzie pointed out in 1962 that there had not been a comprehensive study of the contribution women made to the Australian war effort.103 This is still so today. The information that does exist relates mainly to women in the services, especially those who performed work that was new to their sex or who endured internment or death while serving overseas.104 There has been no detailed examination of the work and sufferings of women in civilian life; all that exists are cursory accounts of the number of women in industry, which are often accompanied by the implication that this experience changed their lives forever. Whether or not this was the case for a majority of women – it would certainly be true for some individuals – can only be guessed at. All we can do in the absence of more precise information is to examine some of the features of women’s mobilisation and the accompanying social, economic and cultural factors, and try to deduce their effect.

  Of the 855 000 women in civilian employment, only about 70 000 were under the jurisdiction of the Women’s Employment Board. This suggests that the vast majority of working women were employed in traditional female jobs (remembering the raison d’etre of the board) and would not therefore be earning a high wage. Nor would the work have been so exciting and stimulating as to enable them to see it as anything more than their war effort, certainly not something they would wish to continue after the war. One of the purposes of the board was to replace women with male workers as soon as they became available, and so the more skilled and highly paid jobs, which a lot of women had for four or five years, could not be seen as permanent. Indeed it was a function of the board to ensure that they were only temporary.

  The birth rate for both married and single women was only marginally higher during the war years than it had been during the 1930s. This is partly explicable by the fact that so many men were away and that many women would have been reluctant to bear babies during austere wartime conditions. But the low ex-nuptial birth rate also suggests either that Australian women’s dalliances with American servicemen were remarkably chaste or that contraceptive use and abortion were widespread. Norman Haire felt that in 1943, contraception was ‘still regarded as something not quite respectable’105, and that, to his knowledge, only two birth control clinics existed in the whole of the country. But, he said, ‘abortion flourishes to a surprising and alarming extent’.106 The wartime novels mentioned earlier were both written by women and both dealt with abortion, and it seems likely that Australian women resorted to abortion in large numbers in order to destroy the consequences of their wartime affairs.

  As the war was ending, old ideas about what was appropriate for women began to be reasserted. In 1943 Curtin had said in the Women’s Weekly in an interview about women’s wartime role: ‘The home remains her citadel, but the factory and the workshop have become her arena’.107 He said that he expected that when the war was over ‘most women will ultimately be absorbed into the home’.108 The Women’s Weekly itself began to prepare its readers (by now over half a million of them), for the postwar period when ‘the normal way of life’ would be resumed. In 1945 it expressed delight that the serviceman’s ‘riches are being restored to him – children’s laughter and the sight of a small sleepy head upon a pillow – an armchair by the fire and clean sheets – tea in the kitchen and a woman’s tenderness no longer edged by unspoken fears’.109

  Women were being demobbed. Whether they wanted to or not, they were expected to return, not just to civilian life – for few had left it – but to the pre-war division of labour and status and power. Those women who tried to retain their wartime jobs, or to use the skills they had acquired in some related job, were expected to make way for returning e
x-servicemen. A group of women in Melbourne who had been transport drivers during the war applied to the Melbourne City Council for licences to drive taxis, but were refused on the grounds that all jobs were being made available to men who had served.110 What women had done was not considered to be comparable. Many protested at being shunted back to the home, but there was not sufficient organised resistance to reverse the process. To do so would have entailed a major restructuring of the economy and a direct challenge to the sex division of labour, for there were just not enough jobs to accommodate every person who had been mobilised during the war. But most women were as quiescent as they had always been. They were used to carrying out orders, to acting as deputies, and now that a new directive had come through, one that said ‘populate or our nation will perish’, most women obediently went back home and started having a baby.

  The period between obtaining the vote and the end of the Second World War had shown that women were active, resourceful and ingenious in a wide variety of occupations and situations. They could cope with economic depression and with war. Now they were being asked to cope with peace. That was proposed as being a return to ‘normal’; but probably a great proportion of women, the younger ones especially, were uncertain what ‘normal’ was. Not knowing what was required of them, they had to seek guidance and there was no shortage of agencies willing to bombard them with prescriptive advice. The Women’s Weekly, the government, the churches, political parties, the returning soldiers, their own mothers – all dispensed guidance, and it all pointed in the one direction. Whether or not it could be reconciled with the hopes and dreams these women had acquired during the war became largely irrelevant for they were powerless to do any more than comply with this further prescription as to their roles.