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Now we come to the difficult passage in the story:
the mobilisation of women for the war industry. Most of us know
something about the results. We have seen in war factories of every kind
throughout the country these women at work, girls and women who not long
ago were shop assistants, luxury trade hands, chambermaids, domestic
servants, waitresses, chorus girls, housewives, now working to produce
aircraft, tanks, guns, bombs and shells. The change has been dramatic
and heartening. But how was it brought about? Millions of women cannot
be taken out of shops offices, hostels, and kitchens, and transformed
into capable war workers in the twinkling of an eye.
 The
whole business of mobilising and employing women – wives, sweethearts,
daughters – is new and tricky. It creates special and dangerous
problems of its own over and above those encountered in the conscription
and mobilisation of men. Let us see briefly how the job was tackled.
We have seen already, how, in May, 1940, agreement
was reached with the chief trade unions connected with war industries to
admit women to various kinds of work from which those unions had
previously debarred them. The Government made vigorous appeals,
heightened by the drama of the war situation, to women to offer
themselves for employment or training-followed-by-employment in the war
industries. The response, especially at the more dramatic periods, was
considerable, and often women flocked to offer themselves for service
before the war effort was ready to absorb such numbers or the machinery
of reception and allotment was functioning properly to receive them.
Undoubtedly some of these appeals were ill-timed.
They came before the plans to make full use of the women’s services
were ready. The recruits arrived before the recruiting sergeant. Girls
who, in a glow of patriotic fervour, rushed round to the Employment
Exchanges, to be told there by harassed and overworked officials that
they were not wanted yet, naturally felt irritated and frustrated by
this anti-climax.
They frequently told each other, and the rest of
us, loudly and at length, that from then on the country could whistle
for their services. But the country, instead of whistling, prepared a
series of Fall-In bugle calls.
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