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ROBERT MENZIES BROADCASTS ON STATION
2UE, SYDNEY - 1942
Women in War
It follows the full text transcript of
Robert Menzies' Women in War
speech, broadcast from Sydney, Australia — February
20, 1942.
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There is no more
popular fashion than that of calling ourselves |
realists. But what
is "realism"?
Surely it is a
state of mind in which the thinker has put on
one side all sentiment or prejudice or
self-delusion. In other words, realism involves
facing the facts, whatever they may be, and
acting in accordance with them.
On no question is a realistic approach so
necessary but so rare as it is on the question
of war employment of women. Tonight I want to
take a few moments of your time in clearing up,
if I can, your minds and my own on a problem
which is of increasing importance and urgency.
We have grown up with what might be called all
sorts of taboos and superstitions and
conventions on this matter. We say, perhaps a
little artificially, that women should not do
this or that kind of work, and that if
circumstances do require that they should work,
the task should have a quality of gentility.
Now, what is the truth about the kind of work
that women can do - and particularly about the
kind of work that women can do in the war? I
should like to answer that question by reference
to my own experience of observing war work in
Great Britain last year.
Many hundreds of thousands of women were
actively engaged in the war effort - not only in
nursing and hospital services, but in scores of
other ways. The Auxiliary Territorials were
doing clerical work, were driving cars, were
carrying on administrative activities.
At operational
headquarters of branches of the air force I saw
hundreds of young women in uniform doing, with
speed and accuracy, work of the greatest
importance. At the fire stations of London,
scattered right through the blitz area, there
were hundreds of women - young and not so young
- dressed in the blue overalls of the auxiliary
fire service; not merely standing around and
looking picturesque, but working hard and fast,
reporting fires, telephoning, doing a mass of
clerical work which before the war was done by
men.
And it did not end there. When the bombs came
down and the fires started there were young
women of the auxiliary fire service driving
cars, driving other vehicles, operation
courageously in the fire-lit target areas,
coping with incendiary bombs, sweating and
grimy, but playing a part worthy of any brave
man.
Just before I left England, selected women were
being introduced into active army operations,
doing particularly some of the precision work
involved in the anti-aircraft defenses.
In every munitions and aircraft factory that I
saw, there were hundreds and sometimes thousands
of women employed. Some of them of course were
doing fine inspection work where lightness of
touch and accuracy of eye produce speed and
output. But these were a relatively small
proportion . Most of the women at work were
dressed in overalls like men, attending to
lathes and presses, using riveting machines,
wielding hammers, doing in many instances
downright hard manual labor.
As I saw them they were cheerful, with good
nerves, with the right enthusiastic spirit.
I was told more than once that on a morning
after a blitz in some industrial area you could
almost bank on one hundred per cent of the women
employees being on time for work.
In the country districts the increased
production which is being wrung from the soil of
Great Britain is in many instances being wrung
from it by the hard physical toil of women of
the land army.
On every street the woman bus-conductor is a
familiar sight.
So there are hundreds of thousands of women in
uniform, in overalls; but there are millions of
women who, while they form part of no army and
work in no factory, are doing a superb job in an
entirely unadvertised and often unnoticed way.
Today's housewife
in Great Britain has had the whole order of her
life disturbed. She has become a great
improviser, a person of almost infinite
resourcefulness. If the bombs fall and the
electric light system is interrupted or the gas
mains are set on fire or the water pipes burst,
she must be able at almost a moment's notice to
turn her hand to getting, by what means a man
can never understand, a hot meal for her family,
because the day's work must go on and the day's
workers must be fed. After dinner at night,
sitting with her family in her suburban street,
she may find herself called upon to go out with
sand bag and stirrup pump to help to extinguish
incendiary bombs in her area.
What a life! And what amazing courage this is
that can take daily danger almost as a
commonplace!
And, apart altogether from bombs and
destruction, this same housewife is the one who
has had to adjust the routine of household
management to rationing - the rationing of food,
the rationing of clothing, the rationing of
almost everything that people buy.
One could go on for a long time with a catalogue
of this kind of thing. But, in brief, it all
represents a formidable breaking down of old
barriers and old ideas.
No doubt this great movement of women into the
defense of the realm is destroying or impairing
some elements of life which we might have liked
to keep. But we shall be completely unrealistic
if we do not realize that when this war is over
there will no more be a return to the status quo
for women than there will be such a return to
many of our older notions of life.
Now, what are the paramount questions that we in
Australia must answer in relation to this
problem if we are to face frankly our dangers,
and therefore our needs?
The dominant one must be this: Have we ample man
power for all the tasks of this war - including
not only the fighting services, but munitions
production, essential civil production both
primary and secondary, and essential civil
services? (When I use the expression "man
power", I mean man power and not woman power.)
Plainly, we have not ample man power for these
needs in the light of the new and extending and
pressing demands of this war.
Well, then, can we achieve our end by drawing
upon woman power? Plainly, we can to a very
great extent. There should be no prejudice on
this matter. There must be no prejudice on this
matter.
Wherever a woman is willing and able to do some
job, however "unwomanly" that job might have
seemed to the eye of convention or of custom a
few years ago, and her employment in it will
either give us something we lack today or
release a man for a job, fighting or otherwise,
which only a man can do, then there should be no
barrier against the woman doing it. On the
contrary, there should be active encouragement
and direction. That seems to me to be the
essential principle of this matter.
Somebody may say to me that this lifting of many
women out of ordinary domestic affairs, this
taking down of woman from her "pedestal" is
fraught with grave dangers for the future of the
race.
Perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn't. But the
gravest danger to the future of our race is that
we shall be defeated in this war, and we must be
prepared to take much greater risks than the one
to which reference has just been made if victory
is to be ours.
Really, I do not think we need fear the future
on this matter unduly. There is - and every year
I live, every new experience I have convinces me
of it more and more - there is courage, energy,
skill and resource about women which can serve
this land mightily.
And if that is true, will the country not be all
the richer because those qualities have been put
to the highest patriotic use? In the long run,
will our community not be a stronger, better
balanced and more intelligent community when the
last artificial disabilities imposed upon women
by centuries of custom have been removed?
There is no equality so ennobling as an equality
in service. There is perhaps nothing we need
more as a corrective to the patent ills of
democracy than a full brotherhood and sisterhood
in action and sacrifice.
When peace comes and we try to resume our normal
lives we will, I believe, learn one thing among
others as a result of our experiences in this
war. And that thing will be that those thousands
of women who will, before this trial ends, serve
Australia with all the strength of their minds
and hearts and hands, will be the better mothers
of the new generation because in this one they
have been the fighting daughters of their
country.
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