WAR-TIME WORK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23985, 7 December 1939, Page 15

WAR-TIME WORK

CIVIL AIR GUARD Women members of the Civil Air Guard, whose flying tuition has cost the British Government just over £55,000, have beei told that the State cannot utilise their services in aviation now. writes Betty Wilson from London r. 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 woman are much more useful as cooks than as aviators. 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 land 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 the last war) are nearly all serving England as clerks, cooks or domestic workers, at wages which begin at Is 3d a day and which may. for a particularly important executive job. 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 3000 members of the W.R.A.F.S. (the Air Force women s service), who are doing the same work, are to be supplemented by" more recruits in a new recruiting drive scheduled to begin shortly. Officials just can’t find enough women to do the “ chores." A whole army of women—so.ooo ot them—has gone over to the Women s Land Army, which has Lady Denman, wife of a former Governor-General of Australia, at its head, with Mrs Walter Elliot, wife of the Minister of Health and Lady Wakehurst’s sister, in charge of the London section. As Commandant-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 precaution work, or who have joined up with voluntary aid detachments. There is another batch of 4000 odd women under the Women’s .Voluntary Service listing. Another 5000 belong to the Women’s Auxiliary 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 their domestic worker problem. A big hospital has just asked for 600 wardsmaids and cooks,” an official said despairingly, “ but while we have floods of recruits for nearly every other kind of service we just can t hna enough domesticated women. Any woman with practical experience of household work would be useful. The same appeal comes from the River Emergency Service, which has been started by the Port of London Authority to deal with river casualThey cannot find enough cooks and waitresses to run riverside canteens and hostels for doctors and nurses, even though they hold out such inducements as the smart trousered uniform—cut rather like a ski-mg suit—which will make girls in the R.E.S. stand out in an army of shortskirted women.