Civilising Forces: Class, Gender and the Australian Women's Army Service 1941-1947

The Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) was Australia’s first women’s army and its largest Second World War women’s service. More than 24,000 women served with the AWAS between 1941 and 1947. Established in response to the threat of Japanese invasion, at a time when Australia’s elite forces were serving overseas, women volunteered to take over home-based servicemen’s jobs to allow them to be sent to the forward areas. Initially required for routine work, women’s roles were expanded following the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 and after the start of Japanese bombing raids on Darwin later that month. Taking on increasingly more technical, traditionally male jobs, AWAS servicewomen were posted to remote, isolated and geographically hostile areas of Australia and finally, to New Guinea.

There has been little academic interest in the AWAS, and this dissertation is the first study to investigate the Service in the context of gender and class. Arguing that these key factors motivated women’s initial desire to serve, it claims that class and gender influenced all aspects of the AWAS, from its formation and leadership to the management of its ethos, public reputation, the lived experience of servicewomen and their expectations for post-war life. It reveals how class-based feminine ideals which underpinned AWAS philosophy were challenged by the growing demands of war and how traditional norms and values re-emerged as peace approached. Finally, it asserts that those who had originally been most advantaged by their class when the AWAS was established were among those with most to lose on demobilisation.