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Activities for Community Groups: Women at War

These activities are designed to be introduced by youth workers and other leaders of children's and young people's groups. They can be used as part of learning activities, drama presentations and community work.

These activities draw on story extracts from the Archive. Story extract titles appear in bold in the activities below, eg A Child Remembers the Outbreak of War. These extracts can be found in the Story Extracts file.

Female stereotypes

Activity 1

Write the word 'Stereotype' on the board, and ask the young people if they know what it means. Explain it if necessary, then ask the group to think of as many stereotypes as they can, and to follow this by creating a stereotypical image of a man and a woman. Split the group into pairs, and ask them to write a list of all the ways the stereotype of men changed during World War Two. The young people should think about men cooking their own meals, doing their own sewing, providing entertainment, administering first aid, etc.

Split your group into sets of three or four. Ask them to read the extracts Memories of a WAAF Teleprinter Operator at Station X (Bletchley Park), Balloon Command, Sheffield 1942-1943, One Wren's War and The ATS in the Desert: Part I. These extracts can be found in the Story Extracts file.

Then ask them to identify the activities discussed in the extracts, showing how during the war the female population undertook tasks that were different from the traditional stereotype of a woman's work, and describe how they behaved while doing this.

Examples

• Memories of a WAAF Teleprinter Operator at Station X (Bletchley Park)
  This extract describes secret work, and traditionally women are not considered to be able to keep secrets, as they are said to gossip more than men.
• Balloon Command, Sheffield 1942-1943
  This extract describes women who have no time to wash themselves or clean up, which goes against the traditional image of women, who are supposed never to be prepared to get dirty.
• One Wren's War
  In this extract a woman undertakes mechanical work - engineering in the Navy - which goes against the traditional view of the sort of work women are able to do.
• The ATS in the Desert: Part 1
  This extract describes a woman in command of soldiers and ATS, running counter to the stereotype of a woman's role, which at the time of World War Two never involved being in charge of men.

Divide the young people into groups of three. Ask each group to nominate one person to write the initials ATS, one to write WAAF and one to write WRNS in the middle of an A4 sheet of plain paper. Using the extracts for ideas, they should add key words about the roles that women in these groups undertook during the war. The key words should be written around the initials on the sheet of paper. Once the pupils have used all they can find in the extracts, hand out the Definitions sheet below, so that they can add extra information.

Detailed fact files about the ATS, WAAF and WRNS are available in the Forces section of the Timeline.

Ask each group to feedback their findings to the group as a whole.

Women's war work

Activity 2

Produce cards with ATS, WAAF and WRNS written on. There should be about ten of each, depending on the size of the group. Cut up the cards and put them in a hat. Ask each member of your group to select a card, but not tell anyone what card they have picked. They must then create themselves a character based on the card they have chosen, and prepare a short speech explaining what they did in the war and why their job was important. They should then act out their speech to the rest of the group. When each has finished, the class should guess to which section of the armed forces they belonged.

Split the young people into groups of four pupils. Tell each group that they are to represent women in the land army, munitions factories or food offices. Hand out the task sheet below.

Nursing during World War Two

Activity 3

Divide the young people into groups of four. Ask each group to write a job description for a nurse. This should be divided into two parts. First the personal qualities you think a nurse would need, such as being sympathetic, and secondly the duties they would have to undertake, such as cleaning or changing dressings. Each group should read out their job description, and then everyone together should compile a whole group job description. Write it on a board or flip chart.

Now divide the group into pairs. Ask each pair to read the extracts My First Three Months as a Fever Nurse and Recollections of a Nurse during WW2. These extracts can be found in the Story Extracts file.

They should highlight in red the phrases that match the personal qualities listed in the job description on the board, and underline in green those that match the duties listed in the job description.

Split the young people into appropriate sized groups, and hand out the task sheet below.

'Workers' Playtime'

Activity 4

Split the young people into groups of four. Tell them they are to write a radio play called Women at War, which will be broadcast on 'Workers' Playtime'. Hand out the task sheet.

Get the groups to perform their plays if there is time, and then encourage the whole group to discuss what the women who worked hard during the war would have expected their lives to be like in the future.

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