WOMEN'S WAR-TIME JOBS

Evening Star, Issue 23448, 13 December 1939, Page 13

WOMEN'S WAR-TIME JOBS

Women members of the Civil Air Guard, whose flying . tuition has cost the British Government .just over £55,000, have been told that the State cannot Utilise their services in aviation now (writes Betty Wilson from London .in , the Sydney ‘Morning Herald’). Hospitals, farms—and kitchens—have been, suggested, as their, new field of action,, for, in spite of feminist propaganda, England still believes that women are much more-useful as cooks than as aviators.- • ■ ■-V

The War Office, the Home Office, the Admiralty, and the Air Ministry have domestic problems which are. far . more pressing than any which confront the most put-upon housewife. At' least -half of the 150,000 women who make up England’s army of women will serve their country as ■ cooks and domestic workers, : The remainder of the army is made up of • nurses, V.A.D. workers, and lahd workers, ;• Jobs of the international spy variety are few and far between. Women enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (they were known as the Waacs in tho last war) are nearly all serving England as clerks, cooks, or domestic workers, at. wages which begin at Is 3d a day an’d which mayj for a particularly important executive 30b, go up to 28s 8d a day. There are 20,000 of them. Two thousand Wrens,; serving with the Women’s Royal Naval'Service, are being turned over to domestic and clerical work, and 3,000 members of the WJI.A.F.S. (the- Air; Forqe women’s service), who are doing the same;work, are to be supplemented by more recruits in a sew recruiting drive scheduled to begin shortly. ■; Officials just can’t -find ' enough women to do the “ chores.” A whole army of women*—so,ooo of them—has gone over to the Women’s Land Array, which has Lady Denman, wife of a former Governor-General of Australia, at its head, with Airs Walter Elliot, wife of the Minister of Health and Lady Wakehursf s sist.er, in charge of the London section.. _ < As Comniandant-in-Chief of the British Red Cross, the Princess Royal heads another army- of 60,000 women, who are nursing in civil and service hospitals, helping air ■' raid precautions work,- or who -ha've joined up- with voluntary aid detachments. There is another' batch of 4,000 odd women under the Women’s Voluntary Service listing. Another 5,000 belong to the Women’s Auxiliary 1 Fire Service—relieving watchmen, staffing switchboards, driving cars. They want more owner-drivers to enrol. The Women’s Voluntary Service has started a campaign for more ambulance drivers. Even more pressing is their domestic worker problem. “ A big hospital has just asked for 600 wardsmaids and cooks,” 1 an official said despairingly, “ but while'; we. have floods of recruits for nearly every other kind of service, we just can’t find enough domesticated ' women'.’ Any woman with practical experience of household work would be useful.” The same appeal comes '■ from the River Emergency Service, which lias been started by the Port "of. London Authority to deal with river casualties. ’’ They cannot find enough cooks and waitresses to run riverside' canteens and hostels for doctors, and nurses, even though they hold out such in-, ducements as the smart trousered uniform—cut rather like a, ski-irig suit —which will make girls in' the R.E.S. stand out in an army of short-skirted women.