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CHAPTER 21
Women At War

To many women it was ‘this beastly war’, that took away the men, emptied the shops, paralysed the cars, curbed outings and holidays, and diverted a girl from her chosen occupation or lack of it. Others, aware of destruction and suffering in Cologne and the Ruhr as well as in Portsmouth or London, recoiled from all war as barbarous and useless, and were both thankful and ashamed that, unlike men of military age, they were not called publicly to stand by the war or reject it. They remained quiet, accepting the war passively, numbed by the headlines and Daventry news reports, waiting for it to pass, and meanwhile concentrating on things at hand, on children, households, jobs, studies, charities, the people they loved. Some such women were in universities, some in less articulate places; some were church members, some not; some were not attached to men drawn into the war, some were. They might give to patriotic collections or subscribe to National Savings, but they did not watch parades or knit balaclavas; they sought, consciously or unconsciously, to preserve enclaves of non-war values, interest and concern. Women have a very long tradition of accepting the inevitable and surviving through it.

Other women wanted to be in it, to do their bit, do something more specific than just going on diligently with their jobs and being kind to soldiers. Certainly such kindness covered a host of actions, from knitting or fund-raising to partnering unknown warriors at dances. In both town and country there was, for women of all ages, patriotic work organised through local committees, and special branches of other bodies—such as Women's Institutes, Townswomen's Guilds, church groups, the Women's Division of the Farmers' Union (WDFU) and also those of particular devotions, notably Air Force Relations and the Navy League. Here was the organised knitting, with wool distributed by patriotic committees, of socks and gloves and mittens (some mittens also ingeniously fashioned from the tops of worn-out socks), of skull caps and balaclavas, scarves and jerseys and sea-boot stockings. In three years, Air Force Relations alone knitted more than 24 000lb of wool into 85 000 garments, while more than one million garments passed through the National

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Patriotic organisation.¹ There was also the making of hussifs, face-cloths and handkerchiefs,² the preparation, through the Red Cross and St John societies, of hospital supplies ranging from bandages, dressings and dysentry pads to pyjamas, quilts and jug-covers.

These women packed the thousands of individual parcels which were crated and sent overseas by provincial patriotic councils to every serviceman four times a year: the cake, biscuits, sweets, all in their separate tins, tinned fruit, coffee and milk, and various meats,³ the cigarettes, soap, razor blades, footpowder, fruit salts, handkerchiefs, writing paper, playing cards, small books and other oddments. Some of these were purchased with patriotic funds, others were made or contributed by citizens.⁴

For prisoners-of-war the Red Cross maintained a steady flow of parcels, without which many would not have survived. One per man per week was the target and, in all, New Zealand prisoners totalled 8469, of whom about 4000 were captured in Greece and Crete during April–May 1941. Each parcel, which with packing weighed 11 pounds, held tins of cheese, jam, coffee and milk, honey or condensed milk, meat, sultanas, dried peas, chocolate, butter, sugar and four ounces of tea. At Red Cross headquarters in Wellington, men did the heavy crating work and more than 1500 women volunteers packed the parcels, measured and packaged the sugar, peas and tea. In the Wellington district in the year ending 31 May 1943, parties of about 33 women, averaging three hours daily, handled 342 952 parcels.⁵

There was also the packing of parcels for one's own near and dear in the Middle East or England or the Pacific. The favourite fruitcakes, ginger nuts and shortbread were baked, carefully fitted into tins and soldered and sealed. Some women with a long list of ‘boys’ baked incessantly. Tinned foods patiently shopped for, and assorted minor comforts with well chosen newspaper in the packing, were sturdily wrapped and sewn in calico.⁶

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There was patriotic fund-raising, through the time-honoured, laborious devices of entertainments, raffles, Paddy's markets, stalls selling cakes, jams, pickles, plants, vegetables, tea-cosies, aprons, children's clothes. Acres of cooking passed over the trestles that regularly appeared on city street corners, in suburbs, in small towns and communities. There was much difference in detail but as a random example, one small town, Marton in the Rangitikei district, may be cited. Apart from knitting and Red Cross work, of which there was a great deal,⁷ the patriotic committee held regular shop days, the proceeds going to various appeals. In 1941 two such days were devoted to the Navy League, two to the Heart to Heart appeal, two to the Red Cross, one to soldiers' parcels, one to prisoners-of-war parcels, one to the Mayor's Comforts fund and one to the Nurses' Memorial fund; the total raised was £2,500.⁸

Many women hastened to take first-aid, home nursing and Voluntary Aid Detachment courses with the Red Cross and St John societies, even before war started. In the first few days of September 1939, 500 enrolled for VAD training with the Red Cross in North Canterbury alone, where in the preceding months 600 certificates in first-aid and home nursing had been issued.⁹ In all more than 12 000 certificates were issued by Red Cross national headquarters in 1939, after which it was decided that each local centre would issue its own. It was also decided to widen the scope of courses available, with training in motor vehicle driving and mechanics, in cooking, laundry, canteen and Air Raid Precautions work.¹⁰ Again citing North Canterbury, in three years, by September 1942, 3275 women had taken the home nursing course, 3753 had done first-aid, 1086 had studied hygiene and sanitation, 197 had taken the ARP course.¹¹ In the Wellington area 1240 took courses in 1939, 1527 in 1940, 2360 in 1941 and 1830 in 1942 when the risk of an emergency reached its peak. Numbers then waned.¹² Response would have been similar in other districts. The widespread training, apart from giving qualifications in EPS work, enabled women to cope better with everyday minor injuries and ailments, lessening calls on hard-pressed doctors.

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VAD training was longer. In addition to the courses in first-aid, home nursing, hygiene and sanitation, it required more than 60 hours of hospital work, but hundreds went through it to be ready for work in emergencies. By September 1942 North Canterbury had 520 VADs fully qualified and nearly as many partly trained,¹³ while in the whole South Island, excluding Marlborough and Nelson, 2088 women had qualified as nursing VADs; others, in the transport section, had taken examinations in elementary motor vehicle management, while kitchen and laundry trainees had staffed two auxiliary hospitals during an influenza epidemic.¹⁴ In the first two years there was little direct call on their services, save when outbreaks of influenza, measles and mumps in camps and air-training schools filled emergency hospitals, often in racecourse buildings or commandeered schools. By mid-1941 some were wondering why, and for what, they had been urged to prepare.¹⁵ In that year the Air Force began using nursing aids in its station hospitals within New Zealand and later a few were regularly employed by the Army: in February 1944 there were 119 working for the Air Force and 50 at military camp hospitals.¹⁶

An elect few went overseas. In September 1941, amid a good deal of heart-burning, 30 VADs were carefully selected from all over the country and later sailed for the Middle East, followed shortly by 200 more.¹⁷ About 14 were shorthand typists who worked in hospital offices, etc, while in the wards the nursing VADs made beds, washed patients, took temperatures, served meals and helped with cleaning and cooking. Others worked on hospital ships. Many became capable and responsible nurses, and their overseas employment was an innovation approved by the Army nursing sisters.¹⁸ By February 1944 there were 268 voluntary aids in the Middle East and the Pacific, and 244 were still overseas in May 1945.¹⁹

At home, from the latter part of 1941 onwards as sick and wounded crowded existing hospitals and the new ones specially built, notably for Americans, there was an increasing demand for VAD services. Unpaid, they logged many thousands of hours in casualty clearing stations and assorted duties in both civil and military hospitals.²⁰ Also they were keenly sought as regular nursing aids, though

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the wages were so low that many preferred other work and, despite the priority of hospital claims, Manpower officials sometimes agreed. In October 1942, J. A. Lee pointed out that, after taxation (at 2s 6d in every £), VADs commonly received only £2 3s 9d weekly includeing living-out allowance. Thereafter, hospital boards were recommended to pay them not less than 30 shillings a week in the first year and 35 in the second, while raising the living-out allowance from 20 to 35 shillings.²¹ Even so, Manpower authorities allowed the appeal of a 23-year-old girl at Auckland who, having previously worked 18 months as a voluntary aid at Whangarei— ‘nothing but a glorified housemaid’—appealed against direction from machine work averaging £3 17s 6d net a week to being a nursing aid at Green Lane Hospital where she would get only £1 17s 6d gross if she lived in, £3 if she lived out.²² Nursing aids at the foot of the nursing service instanced sharply the problem that beset all its ranks: the assumption that dedication, discipline and membership of a noble profession made money almost unnecessary. But threadbare honour was not enough in the changing social patterns wherein women's demands for greater independence combined with labour shortages to make professional satisfaction an insufficient return.

In March 1943 the Civil Nursing Reserve was established to meet the acute and fluctuating demands for staff which beset hospitals, creating crises. At its peak it employed 50 registered nurses and more than 400 voluntary aids, who during four years assisted in more than 30 hospitals, many of which could not have carried on without this supplementary staff.²³

Another area of women's effort was the refurbishing and making of clothes for the war's most direct civilian victims. In June 1940 Lady Galway, wife of the Governor-General, launched a movement to provide comforts for refugees and those in want because of the war.²⁴ The idea of sending clothes to women and children bombed out of their homes grew with the Blitz. Beginning with meetings of mayoresses, with the ballroom at Government House as a practical and inspirational centre, the Lady Galway Guild spread rapidly. Soon there were branches in cities, suburbs and towns of all sizes, headed by mayoresses and other leading ladies, while existing women's organisations formed special groups for the same purpose.

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Old clothes were collected and sorted; dry cleaning firms and transport agencies gave free services. In the Guild's work rooms, in their own homes, and in the sewing circles of supporting bodies, women cleaned, mended and made clothes, cutting up worn or unsuitable garments to make all sorts of children's clothing, with special emphasis on warm things for babies and young children. Quantities of junior shirts, shorts and trousers were made from old suits. Pieces of new material begged from manufacturers made skirts and shorts and pants and jackets, locknit singlets and petticoats.²⁵ Wool was knitted and reknitted, patchwork rugs were made out of knitted squares or pieces of worsted and tweed. Women's coats and frocks were mended and freshened. Many Depression-trained women were already adept at such contrivings and they taught others. Skilled young women from dressmaking firms came to work in groups.²⁶ Displays of garments were viewed, informing and inspiring further efforts.

Within two months more than a hundred tons of clothing had been sent off to Britain, and there were more than a hundred branches of the Guild, each with its own subsidiary organisations, through which flowed a constant stream of clothing for sorting and making over.²⁷ Besides direct volunteers, groups from all sorts of bodies took turns at the Guild's work tables: in Wellington, for instance, during 1941, the National Club supplied Monday's workers, a private group came on Tuesdays, the Repertory Society and Victoria League on alternate Wednesdays, the Women's Institute and Union of Jewish Women on alternate Thursdays, the Labour Women's Patriotic Organisation on Fridays.²⁸ Through sewing circles in many organisations—the Red Cross, YWCA, Townswomen's Guilds, Women's Institutes, the WDFU—in suburbs and in remote country areas, the work went on and parcels were sent to the main centres for despatch.²⁹ Early in 1942, when attack by Japan seemed probable, it was decided to retain a portion of the prepared clothing, lest need strike nearer home,³⁰ but the flow did not cease.³¹

Over the years, the Lady Galway Guild and its tributaries continued to send out cases of clothing, mainly to Britain but sometimes

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to other bomb-targets such as Malta and Russia.³² Effort was sustained by the warm reception from the British Women's Volunteer Service, for example, in 1943: ‘… your magnificent generosity. It is quite beyond me how you can still send such lovely presents, but we are truly thankful that you can.’ And again, ‘words are inadequate. I should like you all to see a woman bombed from her home being fitted out in your clothes, amazed, as she climbs into a coat, to be told that it has come all the way from New Zealand. No speeches, no flag-wagging, can cement the Empire ties more inviolably than this, that somebody in New Zealand should be helping somebody in Great Britain. The miles of land and ocean dwindle to nothing. You have become Mrs Jones from Next-door lending a helping hand.’³³ In 1944 the work was still going on briskly, though now at some centres the proceeds of one day a week were reserved for the families of servicemen overseas, and many such were helped through the era of shortages.³⁴

Some groups of women in shops, offices or factories also organised themselves for particular projects. For instance, about 120 girls from Flamingo Frocks, Auckland, aged 15 to 25, earning weekly from 17s to £2 12s 6d, tackled the needs of the military hospital at Narrow Neck. They gave money to buy a vacuum cleaner and an infrared lamp, also material for sheets, pillow-slips, pyjamas and dressing gowns which they made up in the firm's workrooms. They made socks, mittens, gloves, slippers, table covers, cushions, towels and 26 patchwork rugs; they painted red flamingos on lampshades.³⁵ Thereafter, they settled down to working for the Lady Galway Guild and the St John Ambulance.³⁶ By February 1944 the tea rooms of James Smiths, Wellington, had given £200 to the Harbour Lights Guild of Missions to Seamen to buy comfortable chairs, cutlery, cups, a portrait of George VI and handkerchiefs for Christmas parcels. Wish-bones from poultry used in the tea rooms provided most of the money: about 8000 were bleached, enamelled and sold to be put in overseas parcels for good luck.³⁷ Less bizarre, groups of girls

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from firms did Red Cross, EPS and WWSA work, including camouflage-net making, or they typed for the Home Guard.³⁸

Especially in towns near camps, the entertainment of servicemen on leave, most of them far from home and friends, was an obvious urgent problem: otherwise the lads had only the pictures, the pubs and the streets. Many would prefer the pubs to the pictures, but the pubs closed at 6 pm. No one wanted the streets filled with rowdy or staggering soldiers, and clearly it was both a duty and a pleasure which fell naturally into the hands of women to make ‘our boys’ as happy as possible.

Obviously as a first step there must be Services clubs. Army, Navy and Air Force (ANA), Welcome and Catholic Service clubs appeared rapidly, first in the main leave towns, then further afield, as at Palmerston North and Timaru.³⁹ They were run by local patriotic committees and by hundreds of voluntary workers, mainly women. Christchurch probably led here: its Welcome Club was created almost overnight in October 1939 to greet the first soldiers on weekend leave from Burnham with an information bureau, tea and a dance;⁴⁰ its Union Jack Club, opened in August 1940, was admired in other cities.⁴¹ Everywhere, these clubs were open for long hours, offering cafeterias, cheap meals, lounges, reading rooms, weekend entertainments and sleeping accommodation (but never enough).

Such clubs were, however, only a drop in the bucket. Food and company, primarily the company of young women, were the foremost needs. Dancing was the most direct, simplest and cheapest way for girls and servicemen decorously to begin acquaintance and pass the time. Accordingly, dancing was the staple entertainment, though there were also concerts, community sings and socials with games and charades. Existing clubs such as the YMCA, YWCA, Toc H, Victoria League and National Club opened their doors to servicemen at weekends, supplying teas, cost-price dinners, and dancing. New clubs sprang up, run by volunteers and helped by patriotic funds, mainly for weekend entertainment. Wellington, for instance, had the Spinsters,⁴² Webby's, the Grosvenor, the Victory, the Fighting

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Forces and the Cinderella⁴³ clubs and others even out in the suburbs, such as the Miramar Fighting Services' Hospitality Club.⁴⁴ Organised groups of women and girls took turns at cooking, serving, washing dishes, chatting up the boys and dancing. For girls especially, these clubs were mutual benefit societies, as outside them men were growing scarcer; older women and established hostesses contributed their social standing and skills. Many, both as individuals and in groups, especially from country areas and small towns, sent in quantities of vegetables, meat, eggs, butter, hams, fruit, jam, cake, biscuits and flowers.⁴⁵

Other places offered cafeterias and relaxation in lounges and reading rooms throughout the days and evenings. They were staffed with friendly women who, besides serving food and chatting, would sometimes mend clothes and sew on buttons, as at Wellington's Salvation Army hut, handily placed between the railway station and the wharves.⁴⁶ Some of these places were also hostels, offering beds, though again never enough of them, such as Toe H and the Carrie Army Hostel in Auckland,⁴⁷ Toc H and the Combined Hostel in Wellington,⁴⁸ the Salvation Army in several cities.⁴⁹ Catholic Service clubs opened, offering home-style comforts from tea and papers to weekend entertainment and beds.⁵⁰ The YMCA was active, opening its gymnasiums and other facilities to servicemen and extending its premises in several cities to provide hundreds of beds, while various churches and women's auxiliaries took turns in providing weekend meals and entertainment.⁵¹ When the Americans arrived, more clubs appeared in the relevant centres, equipped with American features such as coffee and hamburgers, and with information bureaux for making contacts with hospitable civilians.⁵²

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Many families, especially those with sons in the forces or with daughters about, gave tireless warmth and good home meals to an endless chain of friends' friends from the camps. Often this meant easy companionship, liveliness and linked acquaintances; sometimes, given shy lads with little small talk, it was heavy going, and after one had joked through dinner and the dishes a desperately long time could stretch out before the next cup of tea or the leave train. Many boys, of course, would not face such amiable ordeals, and stuck to their own resources, however bleak, counting Sunday leave as a dead loss. New Zealand Sundays were still solid Sabbath: not till the Americans came was there even the refuge of films for servicemen and their friends, which then began in two or three cinemas in each city. Popular films, however, had long runs, and save for some sports arrangements there was no other regular entertainment for the non-dancers, except the pursuit of girls, sometimes an elegant pursuit, sometimes coarse. As one American told a reporter, with a New Zealand soldier in agreement, ‘a man at liberty occasionally wants more than a cup of coffee and a paper to read’.⁵³

Letter-writing occupied thousands and thousands of hours, countless evenings when women searched memory over humdrum days, sometimes helped by notes on kitchen jotters or on envelopes in handbags and sometimes inhibited by awareness of the censor, for there were so many things that one should not mention. They wrote to Bill or Jack or Jim, strove to feel close to him, perhaps cried a little, perhaps worried that they did not cry, worried that he was becoming remote and unreal. As the overseas months and years passed, even a much-loved man could recede frighteningly, endearments and yearnings seemed mechanical because they had been written and read so often. Sometimes letters were an emotional life-line that sustained and confirmed a relationship, sometimes they nurtured a minor friendship into knowledge and strength. Sometimes, particularly for the less articulate, ardour faded on the pages as time and distance wore down feeling, especially when another man appeared more lively and more mature, simply because he was there, than Bill, Jack or Jim in Egypt or Italy or New Caledonia. Some wrote only to husbands or boyfriends, to sons or brothers or relatives or close friends; some sterling girls wrote more or less regularly to many not really close to them, understanding how the boys looked for letters, any letters, that gave news and warmth and the sense of belonging back there; understanding how good it was to be the lad with a packet, how desolate to be the one for whom there was no mail at all.

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For some women such homely, low-keyed contributions were not enough: they wanted sterner, more stirring stuff. In films and in the newspapers, British girls forked hay, fed calves, drove tractors, Army cars and ambulances through the Blitz; impressive in trousers, overalls and goggles they worked on shells and hand-grenades and aeroplanes, welding and using heavy machinery; in uniforms replete with pockets they swung in soldierly fashion, chins lifted, faces rigid; in control rooms they read dials and signals, uttered messages, moved flags. These things were important, dedicated and far more exciting than one's normal typing or shop work, replacing a man at an office desk or machining shirts and trousers. This zeal to do ‘real war work’ found spontaneous expression.

At Auckland, soon after war began, the Women's National Service Corps was launched, and within a year recruited about 400 girls, keen to cope with emergency. Its style was very military. Its commander, ‘Major’ D. M. Hawkins, who had been an officer in a women's auxiliary in England during the last war, was now a drill instructor at a girls' school and had the remarkable distinction of being chairman of the New Lynn RSA.⁵⁴ She was understandably keen on drill. Disciplined movement and smart saluting were conspicuous with these devoted girls, but they also trained for VAD and clerical duties, for signalling, canteen work and cooking, while their transport section, besides driving, learned to repair motors. They had no public support, but each paid 6d a week for expenses and provided her own uniform. Khaki material was scarce, so they began with shirts and shorts for drill, looking forward to public parades when fully equipped with skirts and caps, which they had attained by August 1940.⁵⁵ Their first route march was photographed in September.⁵⁶ To these young women their khaki was a great attraction and they thought of it as the King's uniform, not as that of a private club.⁵⁷

Despite an internal row and some external criticism,⁵⁸ their zeal won recognition. They obtained the use of Narrow Neck military parade ground for their Saturday afternoons,⁵⁹ and in January 1941 they held a camp on Avondale race course, where their elaborate

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marching was approved by Brigadier Bell.⁶⁰ They joined in a ceremonial parade of troops⁶¹ and from time to time the Army rewarded their eagerness with use. They worked in military hospitals during epidemics, did canteen work: after a city parade they served pies, buns and tea with great dispatch to 4000 3rd Echelon men.⁶² By mid-1941 some were employed as cooks at Waiouru Military Camp and some were doing driving jobs for the Army.⁶³ They also did clerical and telephone work for the Army and Home Guard.⁶⁴ Their smartness and military movement continued to impress in parades, while their signallers were becoming adept in semaphore and morse.⁶⁵

When the WWSA was set up in August 1940 to co-ordinate all women's war work, the National Service Corps was one of the first bodies to affiliate; its commander, Miss Hawkins, was elected to the WWSA Auckland committee, and after the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) was formed in February 1942 she attained full military status by becoming head of its Auckland division.⁶⁶ In December 1941 the National Service Corps had 520 members for signalling, transport, clerical and cooking work, and 40 band players;⁶⁷ by mid-August 1942 membership was reported as 450, out of which 76 had joined the WAAC with Miss Hawkins, 75 were in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), three were in the Land Army, while 30 were driving, herd-testing or doing hospital work.⁶⁸ By December 1943 only those tied to essential industry or to their homes remained, doing spare time work in Service canteens and clubs, and packing patriotic parcels. One group cooked for a Home Guard unit, while the entertainment section, assisted by three American servicemen and a returned New Zealander, performed at clubs and hospitals.⁶⁹

In mid-1940 some Christchurch women, rightly foreseeing a scarcity of vegetables, decided to grow them in their spare time. About 50 business and professional women, led by Mary McLean,⁷⁰

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formed a modest, non-uniformed group to grow vegetables for orphanages and other institutions which might not be getting their normal peacetime support. Some produced more in their own gardens, some, tutored by City Council gardeners and by skilled members of the group, tackled half an acre in Abberley Park, a former suburban estate, ploughed for them by the City Council.⁷¹ Among those who collected blisters on this ground was Ngaio Marsh,⁷² better known in the fields of detective fiction and drama production.⁷³ Several landowners lent accessible sections and the gardeners multiplied. They grew their own seedlings in thousands, and by the summer of 1941–2 the WWSA bicycle corps was delivering their vegetables to orphanages, the Salvation Army, old age pensioners, returned soldiers and soldiers' wives.⁷⁴

At this stage the group, having acquired a dehydrating oven to dry beans for men on minesweepers around New Zealand, decided to send beans to Britain also. In the ‘Beans for Britain’ campaign, local women were asked to grow extra in their own gardens, timed so that the oven could cope with production, while cocoa tins, etc, were saved for packaging. A dietician, Dr Muriel Bell,⁷⁵ approved the project, and Christchurch beans duly found their way to women's societies in the north of England.⁷⁶ Early in the enterprise there was modest readiness to use this enthusiasm in regular production. Several market gardeners offered to take on girls for training while, as some aspired to farm work, at least eight farmers ‘consented to take girls who are at present not working in the city and train them as farm workers’. Their duties were to include the care of calves, pigs and fowls, feeding and grooming horses, milking cows, gardening and assisting with housework. They would probably go in pairs, taking camp stretchers and their own bedding, and be prepared to get their own meals, saving the farmers' wives additional labour; wages would be privately arranged between trainee and farmer.⁷⁷ In the early summer of 1941 successive groups of the Christchurch Land Army⁷⁸ spent a week of their annual holidays at Waimate picking peas at 1d a pound, an effort approved by the Farmers'

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Union in the growing labour shortage.⁷⁹ A month later, however, this effort was discontinued following complaints that Christchurch land girls were depriving Waimate people of work.⁸⁰

Driving, obviously a vital skill, was prominent in several preparatory efforts. In Wellington in October 1939 young and not-so- young women, with their own cars, enlisted in an auxiliary transport group with the general idea of being useful and prepared.⁸¹ Led by Mrs V. Hole,⁸² who had driven an ambulance in the previous war, they learned first-aid, stretcher drill, map-reading and transport column work and took a fairly extensive course in motor mechanics, prescribed by the Institute of Automative Engineers, with practical work in garages, and examinations.⁸³ By mid-1940 they had moved under the auspices of the Red Cross which was organising similar groups in other centres, conspicuous in blue-grey, two-piece uniforms and red-crossed caps.⁸⁴ They practised traffic control and ambulance driving, using three-ton lorries on hilly roads, and went with ambulance drivers for experience.⁸⁵ By 1943 there were about 150 members at both Auckland and Wellington, 50 at Dunedin and smaller groups at other places. They were on call for various duties, notably meeting ships and trains bringing wounded, and regularly driving convalescents between their homes and the hospitals for treatment, giving their time and cars free, but using government petrol; a few drove Army vehicles.⁸⁶ In some places, such as Palmerston North, the most experienced were on the hospital pay-roll as supplementary ambulance drivers.⁸⁷ In the EPS system they were attached to medical aid posts. In Dunedin, beginning in October 1939, about 25 women were trained in regular St John Ambulance work, replacing men in voluntary duty, on call to hospitals and accidents and attending sports meetings.⁸⁸

In sundry places and through various organisations, women learned to drive and service heavy vehicles. At Christchurch, in the General

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Service Corps, a body organised to help the war effort in any direction, there was a vigorous women's section which, besides knitting, sewing and entertaining troops, had an active transport branch of about 280, whose training included mechanics, first-aid, signalling and drill.⁸⁹ In New Plymouth, YWCA classes in mechanics at the Technical College were followed by practical courses in driving and in running repairs, with the Borough Council lending heavy lorries for the last stages of training.⁹⁰ In Ashburton, during July 1940, 63 women enrolled for transport driving in the Technical School's evening classes.⁹¹ Gisborne had a group of 50 to 60 women, many able to drive trucks, linked with its Legion of Frontiersmen, waiting for emergency and meanwhile learning squad drill from a sergeant-major.⁹²

Driving was not the only avenue of preparation. The idea of listing people who were ready to help in various ways was gaining ground, notably in Christchurch where canvassers of the General Service Corps were making such a register;⁹³ in country districts Women's Institutes were sorting out those ready to cook, drive, do home nursing and first-aid, care for children or take in evacuees.⁹⁴ As the gloomy headlines of June and July unfolded in 1940, women in several towns began to form active groups for widespread work. In the Manawatu a large and eager meeting, with the mayoress of Palmerston North presiding, formed an auxiliary service corps, to be on the lines of Britain's WAAC of the last war and ready for an emergency with units trained in first-aid, mechanics, ambulance and lorry driving, despatch riding, and as cooks and land girls.⁹⁵ Women at Nelson formed an auxiliary corps keen to train for any emergency work,⁹⁶ and at Hamilton 250 enrolled in a corps to assist the war effort in any way required, the immediate activities being service at the local soldiers' club, clerical work for the Army, physical training under an Internal Affairs expert and drill with an Army sergeant.⁹⁷ A year later the town saw precise and efficient marching as this corps paraded in new dark blue uniforms behind the Waikato Regimental Band.⁹⁸

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Thus, by July 1940, there were scattered but widespread attempts by women to organise for the war effort in general and also for an emergency within the country. A month earlier in Wellington the Women's War Service Auxiliary had its beginnings, initiated by Dr Agnes Bennett,⁹⁹ a veteran who, besides notable work in the mother and child field, had the additional status of 1914–18 war service in the Balkans and in England. Thinking of the organised activity of women in England during that war and of how much they could undertake in New Zealand if the mood of zeal were seized, Dr Bennett, after preliminary discussion with other strenuous ladies, headed a deputation to the Prime Minister on 11 June 1940. They first proposed an auxiliary corps of women to assist in essential services, to be trained in any needed capacity, demobilising automatically at the war's end, leaving jobs clear for the returning heroes. Their corps should have a disciplined, military tone, with attesting, readiness to serve anywhere for the duration, and saluting of officers. There should be uniforms, starting with armbands, for recognition by the public, and to make the women feel that they were really giving national service.

This military aspect was firmly discouraged. The Prime Minister said that some of the discipline they had in mind would be quite unacceptable in New Zealand; they seemed to have a uniform complex, but factories were already taxed to the utmost for the fighting forces, the main problem at the moment being to get sufficient labour for them. The idea emerged, shaped largely by Eraser, of the Auxiliary acting as liaison between women at large and government departments; of its using existing organisations, such as Women's Institutes, the Plunket Society and the WDFU, to make contact with large numbers of women, finding out what each could do and as need occurred guiding those with appropriate experience into community service or industry.¹⁰⁰

Thereafter a constitution was worked out, and on 11 July a national conference, representing 69 women's organisations, adopted it and elected officers. Mrs Janet Fraser,¹⁰¹ elected Dominion president, explained that the government had agreed to the formation of the Auxiliary on condition that it obtained the backing of established women's organisations, whose war activities it would co-ordinate, avoiding duplication without disturbing their normal functions. It

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would be a non-military organisation, under control of the Minister of National Service. It would enrol those willing to render service and allot them tasks in the future: at present there was no general drain on manpower.¹⁰² The Dominion Council had 12 elected members,¹⁰³ and four¹⁰⁴ were to be appointed by the Minister of National Service, then Robert Semple. It was widely representative, but unwieldy and met seldom.¹⁰⁵

Business was delegated to a smaller Dominion Central Executive, all living in Wellington; Mrs Fraser (president), Dr Bennett (vice-president), Mesdames V. Jowett,¹⁰⁶ M. J. Bentley,¹⁰⁷ E. M. Knox Gilmer¹⁰⁸ and M. Don¹⁰⁹ (secretary) and Amy Kane.¹¹⁰ Mrs H. Atmore, wife of the independent member for Nelson, toured the four centres preaching the gospel of preparation, training and readiness to do all kinds of work. Despised domestic duties must be raised in status, no honest work was menial; women should be ready to work the factories 24 hours a day if necessary. All organisations should enrol members for this comprehensive new body, filing details of qualifications; age did not count but all should improve their physical fitness.¹¹¹

This could hardly produce the wanted ‘feeling of living in an armed camp’ or meet ‘the burning desire to do our bit’ that the Woman's Weekly of 8 August perceived in women. Simply, there

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were as yet no jobs for them, and the burning desire in many cases burnt out. But the WWSA organisation busily established itself. Branches soon formed in many centres, each with nine members elected by and from the women's organisations, and three appointed by the government. As the Taranaki Herald remarked on 26 October, the latter were a precaution against any one interest being over-dominant. They generally represented the Labour side, and the lists of those elected suggest that they were a necessary balance. Thus Wellington's elected ladies were drawn from the Plunket Society, University Women, Business and Professional Women, the Women Writers and Artists' Association, the Society for the Protection of Women and Children, the YWCA, the League of Mothers, the Lyceum Club and WDFU.¹¹² A trade union secretary doubted if they represented 25 per cent of women in the district, and ‘A Tailoress’ thought that they would have included a qualified clothing tradeswomen.¹¹³ The government appointees, Mesdames R. Semple, M. J. Bentley and H. D. Bennett, added some Labour ballast.¹¹⁴

The immediate aim was to enlist as many women as possible, both directly and through affiliated organisations. Members filled in cards, saying what they could do, whole-time or part-time, and what training they could undertake. From these cards WWSA district committees compiled lists of those willing to help in various ways, such as driving, first-aid, farming, clerical work, growing vegetables, caring for children, working in hospitals or factories. Then they paused, for zeal outran opportunity. It was established that in Industry even the most patriotic must work for wages on the same terms as regular employees, and in practice the Auxiliary's only activity in this field was referring women who wanted factory work to the placement officer. At the start of October, Wellington had about 1400 members, Christchurch 1000.¹¹⁵ By December 1941 there were 183 local centres and sub-centres, all compiling their registers.¹¹⁶ After Japan's entry membership, including affiliated organisations, rose steeply to 75 000 in 1942, with 250 district committees.¹¹⁷

Vegetable-growing on a modest scale was one of the first direct activities of the WWSA, following the lead of the affiliated Christchurch business women who had begun their gardens earlier. Wellington members soon tackled a vacant section in Aitken Street near

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Parliament Buildings.¹¹⁸ Other sections were made available at Russell Terrace, Khandallah and Sydney Street, some needing strenuous clearing: at Sydney Street nine lorry-loads of old iron and rubble were cleared for a bumper crop of potatoes. These vegetables went to Service clubs, as did those grown by members at Eastbourne and Paraparaumu.¹¹⁹ Dunedin's land group began in July 1941 with classes in horticulture, then the City Council lent them half an acre at Chingford, on which about 20 women were soon producing promising crops destined for nearby military camps.¹²⁰ Auckland's WWSA did not cultivate civic plots, but arranged well attended classes for improving orchard and garden skills, and sought out knowledgeable gardeners in every locality to advise others.¹²¹

Apart from gardening, compiling registers and waiting for jobs to turn up, the WWSA began several training courses so that women would be ready for tasks arising from attack, generally referred to as ‘emergency’. Canteen workers learned about camp cooking and catering for large numbers.¹²² In technical college classes, garages and city corporation yards, transport groups learned how to drive and repair heavy vehicles, hoping to be called to the wheel.¹²³ The Press on 17 January 1942 reported that 20 WWSA and General Service Corps girls were delivering impressed vehicles to camps, their first opportunity for driving service after drilling and studying for a year. They sought experience wherever possible, some driving shingle trucks, others heavy vehicles, even a double-decker sheep truck.¹²⁴ Signals groups learned morse with flags, buzzers and lamps.¹²⁵ Bicycle dispatch riders trained in long-distance runs, care of their machines, night-riding, map reading, local geography and street directories and in formation-riding for parades.¹²⁶ All groups learned first-aid, map reading and some signalling. They also had plenty of drill, so conducive to discipline and a good appearance in public. Keep-fit classes were organised by the physical welfare branch of the Internal Affairs Department.¹²⁷

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Some hundreds of WWSA trainees sped into the WAAF when it began early in 1941 and others were ready-made leaders for EPS units, but in May 1942 the Director of National Service expressed longstanding uneasiness: the main function of the WWSA was to co-ordinate the work of other bodies, rather than do the work itself. It would be ‘quite undesirable to continue training women in such work as signalling, clerical, transport, etc., if in the event of an emergency these girls would be unattached to any operating body’ Only those who could be so attached, notably to EPS, should be trained.¹²⁸

These women wanted uniforms, uniforms that gave the outward sign and the inner conviction that one was doing one's bit. Already two earlier organisations, the Auckland National Service Corps and the Red Cross Transport, had contrived their own uniforms, and the Woman's Weekly voiced some current ideas on this theme: ‘for the establishment of unity, discipline and esprit de corps, uniform is not only desirable but necessary, for women's units as for men's. … It must be logically conceded a woman needs to be more correctly accoutred than a man if she is to uphold what has previously been unfeminine attire with necessary dignity and decorum’.¹²⁹ From the start, uniform was envisaged,¹³⁰ and despite the Prime Minister's initial disapproval, War Cabinet duly approved a modest outfit. The first issues were in time for the large home defence parades in the main towns during April and May 1941, the first occasions on which New Zealand women in any number, apart from nurses and those in the Red Cross, paraded in uniform.¹³¹ This consisted of a long-sleeved, belted dress of khaki cotton drill, buttoned right up the front, with three large military-style pockets, worn with a soft-crowned, visored khaki cap, a badge, and a tie the colour of which varied according to the wearer's section. Only active members acquired uniform, and wore it only for drill and training classes, parades and actual duty. With government subsidy, the outfit cost each girl £1. For committee members and training leaders the Minister approved two-piece, military-style uniforms, also of khaki drill, worn with an official badge. But when the central executive, having provided themselves with a distinctive uniform, asked for it to be officially recognised, the Director expressed surprise that this had been done without the Minister's permission.¹³²

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In the long run, through the register of who could do what, the WWSA organised women in various projects, large and small. A few helped in the control rooms or drove as messengers at fire stations.¹³³ Many helped in the perpetual tasks of patriotic fund raising and war loan campaigns. After Japan's entry, when camouflage nets were urgently needed, the WWSA soon had hundreds of women of all ages, in scattered depots, practising the skill initially taught them by a few retired fishermen, along with the boy scouts and girl guides who had already pioneered this field.¹³⁴ Some of the sections were very large on paper, but only women living within reasonable distance of, say, camps or hospitals could be actively engaged. The most prominent were canteen workers, totalling 20 000, who cooked for Home Guard manoeuvres and in evenings and weekends helped to run canteens in military camps and hospitals, or worked in Service clubs and hostels.¹³⁵ They were specially active in 1942–3, when all camps were bulging and, later, when drafts of men were returning they rallied to the catering arrangements. The clerical section (10 000-strong at 31 March 1945) did most of the clerical and typing work for the EPS and Home Guard, and in nightly or weekend stints made up Army arrears, especially in the mobilisation period of 1942. The transport group, 5000 strong, some able to drive heavy vehicles, were prominent in EPS units, and in waste paper and other collections, while many moved into the WAAF and WAAC as drivers. Another 2000 formed the hospital section, which, besides training aids for kitchen and laundry work in an emergency, helped voluntarily with routine clerical and telephone work and hospital visiting. A section of 250 acted as spare-time obstetrical voluntary aids, and in Wellington a group of 30 became full-time nurses in public maternity hospitals.¹³⁶

The WWSA, run largely on volunteer labour and assisted to some extent by donations and small fees for classes, etc, was not extravagant, and was encouraged in its thrift by the government.¹³⁷ Up to 31 March 1945 it cost the War Expenses Account £24,408, of which £15,500 was incurred by March 1942, while 1943–4 saw a credit of £600 from the sale of uniforms.¹³⁸ At the war's end the

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Director of National Service said that it was ‘one of the most inexpensive war organisations set up’.¹³⁹

The WWSA rank and file were stand-by maids of war work, each ready, in any area, at a telephone call or other summons, to turn to any job within her appointed range, generally in her spare time. The higher ranks had a more managerial function. They were, as Fraser from the start intended, the link between officialdom and women in the community. The government had to break new ground in directing women to essential industry and enlisting them in the armed forces. In these innovations, feeling could easily have risen that girls were being Manpowered into positions detrimental to their delicacy or moral fibre. This was forestalled by the prominence of senior WWSA leaders in the early stages of enlistment and Manpower direction; their role, to the public, was something between chaperons and watchdogs of women's interests. As people became accustomed to women in the Services and being directed to work, the WWSA chaperons became less necessary. They were eased off the Manpower scene as more women officials were appointed, and eased out of enlistment procedures, both for the forces and for land work, when enlistment was made direct to the forces and through Manpower to the land service. But at the outset it is probable that this respectable body, elected, however remotely, from women's organisations, cushioned the impact of what some saw as the regimentation of women.

In September 1939 the female labour force was estimated at 180 000. Normal increase in four years would have made it 185 000, but by December 1943, 228 000 women were employed and 8000 others were in the armed forces.¹⁴⁰ The increase was both in women's traditional employments and in new ones. There were more women in teaching and nursing, in shops and offices, in factories where they had usually worked, such as clothing, footwear, woollen mills, biscuits, and confectionery; more women where previously there had been few or none, such as in the Public Service, banks, Post and Telegraph, railways, trams, engineering, canneries, farms, flax and rubber mills and driving work, plus a host of other places in which employers found a few girls useful substitutes for men—on milk rounds,¹⁴¹ as hotel porters,¹⁴² zoo attendants,¹⁴³ on domestic meter

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reading,¹⁴⁴ trucking fruit and vegetables to city markets,¹⁴⁵ scientific work,¹⁴⁶ joinery,¹⁴⁷ brick works,¹⁴⁸ delivering coal,¹⁴⁹ announcing trains at stations,¹⁵⁰ and one even became radio officer on the Cook Strait ferry Tamahine¹⁵¹

At the war's end women straggled away from many of these occupations, but as the succeeding years brought soaring labour demands, not the expected recession, they remained in other areas, such as the Public Service and banks. In time they attained status as permanent employees, instead of being classed as temporary, with few rights; the vigilant ones worked towards equal pay.

Traditionally, New Zealand women on marriage left occupations even before having children, and did not return unless pressed by adversity or an unusual personality. Housekeeping was laborious: vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators and electric heaters were coming in but were by no means general. Open fires were widespread, clothes driers and deep-freezes unknown. The range of ready-made food was much less and frequent use of ‘tinned stuff’ was frowned on by many. Even without children, wives could be busy, especially if they were poor or thrifty. Trade unions and public feeling opposed a married woman keeping a job that might otherwise go to a workless girl and, as the long-established practice of paying women less than men could make them attractive to employers, trade unions watched with suspicion any extensions that might keep work from a man with a family or the prospect of one.

Wide differences between the pay of men and women, accepted by the majority as natural or inevitable, were part of and reinforced the marriage-exodus pattern. The Arbitration Court, in November 1936, fixed the adult basic wage at 76s a week for men and 36s for women and, though many awards gave substantially higher pay, the gap remained wide.¹⁵²

Thus in 1939 the minimum award rate for an adult male clothing trade employee was 92s 6d a week, and for a woman 50s; these rates had risen to 100s and 52s 6d respectively by 1942, plus cost of living bonuses amounting to 10 per cent, and by a further 2s 6d

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each in 1943. A boot operator in 1939 received 91s 8d, a female 50s 10d, rising to 102s 6d and 57s 6d respectively, plus cost of living bonuses, by 1942. An adult male clerk in 1939 received at least 110s, a woman 65s, rates not officially increased till 1946 (by 10s each), though cost of living bonuses were paid.¹⁵³

With rare exceptions, women were not promoted to senior positions in clerical work, nor beyond the place of forewoman in factories. Thus rewards, both in money and satisfaction, did not make the struggle to combine work and housekeeping worthwhile. With higher taxes for double incomes aggregated and assessed as one, and the inevitable buying of goods ready-made, even ready-cooked, plus more clothes and fares, there was little economic incentive for a wife to battle with two jobs. Generally, only when a woman was widowed, divorced, deserted or had a sick or otherwise non-productive husband, would she return to work-bench or desk. More likely, she would do domestic work or cleaning, which would better accommodate such irregularities as children, and was available on a variety of meagre terms.

With husbands in the forces the rationale for non-working wives was gone and Service pay though regular was not generous.¹⁵⁴ On the other hand, there was the implication that women receiving money from Service husbands were working for the war effort, not for mere gain, and therefore modest rates of pay were in order; this could not, of course, affect areas governed by awards.

Early in 1940, enterprising girls began to move into war vacancies in banks, insurance companies, the Public Service and business firms Aside from merit, they were acceptable because they were paid less than the men they replaced and they were expected to be immune from conscription. Further, as it was legally necessary to give a serviceman his job again when he returned, there would be awkwardness if the position had been filled by another man, or successsion of men in turn moving into the forces, whereas a woman was expected to retire willingly when the war ended. If she were already the wife of a serviceman, especially from the same firm or department, the situation was streamlined.

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In April 1940 a former employee of the Auckland Power Board, her husband in the First Echelon, asked for her old job, saying that other local bodies and government departments were employing women such as herself. The Board decided to change its policy of not having married women on its staff.¹⁵⁵ By January 1942 the female infiltration of some offices had become an invasion: thus a leading insurance office had lost 75 per cent of its male staff and its 15 pre-war women had been increased to more than 40;¹⁵⁶ a bank had lost 57 men and its twelve women had become 40;¹⁵⁷ another, having lost 30 men, had replaced them with 30 girls, and yet another, whose pre-war staff of 53 included seven women, had lost 11 men and taken on seven more women.¹⁵⁸ In the Bank of New Zealand, throughout the country, 74 women were employed at the start of the war, nearly 700 at the end of it.¹⁵⁹

The Public Service was likewise filling vacancies with women, preferably servicemen's wives, though by February 1941 it was advertising widely for clerical wartime women. They would generally begin at £145 per year, with £13 cost of living allowance for women dependent on their own earnings.¹⁶⁰ A serviceman's wife, like most wives, did not qualify for this allowance.

Pre-war, the Public Service was a close-knit body, respecting seniority, and normally recruited young cadets, who worked their way up through 40 years, to retire on superannuation. Men of special merit could enter the system from outside by being appointed to particular positions, and to meet humbler needs there were thousands of temporary employees, not entitled to promotion or to superannuation, and subject to dismissal at short notice. In 1939 the male staff of about 18 700 included 4600 temporaries. There were also 2013 women, all temporaries, 1524 being typists and the rest clerical assistants. By 1941 the forces were claiming about 3230 of these men and 1460 more women were on the pay-roll.¹⁶¹ In mid-1942, with 6054 men away, many forms of work hitherto regarded as indispensable to safe and prudent administration had, under ‘pitiless scrutiny’, been discarded or postponed, and 3200 women, taken on for wartime duties, were playing ‘an impressive part’ in the State Services, showing adaptability and keenness to acquit themselves well, though many had not previously done any similar work or

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even been in any regular employment.¹⁶² As a measure of the need for staff, towards the end of 1942 public servants due to retire could do so only with Cabinet consent, and advertisements called for married women to work a six-hour day with pay in proportion.¹⁶³

Growth of permanent staff was checked during the war, though work increased and varied. The Service departments increased markedly; new branches, and even new departments, notably National Service, developed, each with a framework of transferred senior officers; both old and new positions everywhere were filled with temporary men and women. By 1944 there were 10 353 men on the temporary staff and 7062 women, of whom only 2189 were typists.¹⁶⁴ In 1945, the temporary staff totalled 17 601: men, includeing those absent in the forces, numbered 10 524 and there was a slight rise in the number of women–7077, of whom 2184 were typists.¹⁶⁵ There was a marked decline in the following year: there were 10 270 male temporaries and 2234 typists, but the total of women employed had fallen to 5699.¹⁶⁶ Thereafter, long-sought changes took place, and thousands of temporaries, including female clerks and typists, became permanent officers.

Back in 1942, however, only a few thought of such possibilities. Women's pay varied with age and qualifications, but it was not high: the general starting rate for an adult woman was about £3 a week and sometimes less, approximately half the male rate. The official view was that all permanent–temporary, male–female anomalies must wait till the position stabilised after the war, but from 1942 onward the more militant women, through women's branches within the Public Service Association, pressed against their limitations, a good part of their effort being directed towards arousing other women. The majority was not trade union minded, and the Association itself strongly respected seniority, which of course meant male seniority. As early as September 1942 the basic arguments of the battlers were set forth in the Press by Caroline Webb,¹⁶⁷ who declared that in the Public Service ‘women are employed in conditions not short of scandalous. Although the Public Service Act makes no discrimination between the sexes, regulations and administrative procedure have been used to keep women on the lowest grades of the services, to pay them consistently lower rates than men,

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and to appoint them only as temporary members of the service.’ The war meant that many women would find their life's work not in marriage but in industry, the professions, the Public Service. The only satisfactory basis was economic equality between men and women, plus family allowances, which would be a more effective way of providing for children than that of paying every adult male as if he had a wife and three (only three) children.¹⁶⁸

The Post and Telegraph Department took on women in hundreds, beginning in mid-1940 with wives of Post and Telegraph men in the forces.¹⁶⁹ They started with clerical jobs, then moved outdoors, uniformed telegraph girls appearing in Wellington at the start of July 1941, and in Auckland about three months later.¹⁷⁰ In the post-Japanese entry pressure, some began to drive postal vans¹⁷¹ and many shouldered mail bags. Hamilton, in January 1942, was the first town to have women on its mail rounds, closely followed by Wellington, then Auckland,¹⁷² and other centres such as Christchurch and Palmerston North, in March.¹⁷³ The women started in cotton frocks,¹⁷⁴ but wore the WWSA's khaki drill where obtainable,¹⁷⁵ while the Post Office pondered the styling of its grey gabardine or navy serge. In the 1980s mails are regularly delivered by variously garbed ‘posties’, but in the 1940s livery for such tasks was thought necessary, was earnestly devised and even revised. Wellington postgirls, followed by Auckland's, soon acquired frock coats of steel-grey light gabardine, undershot with brown,¹⁷⁶ while Christchurch with its bicycles debated the merits of slacks or divided skirts.¹⁷⁷ Divided skirts of gabardine were issued, but a year later navy blue trousers with battledress tops were optional.¹⁷⁸

By March 1942 about 2500 girls were engaged for the duration as office assistants, drivers, postwomen and lift attendants, with a

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few in automatic telephone exchanges and departmental workshops; a year later there were 4000.¹⁷⁹ In September 1942 at the Chief Post Office, Christchurch, in a staff of 650 there were 308 women where normally there had been about 50; on the postal rounds there were 49 men and 53 women.¹⁸⁰ Telegram girls remained scarce, and although during 1944 some men returned from the forces, adults, both men and women, performed this task hitherto reserved for the young and agile and traditionally for entrants to the permanent staff of the Department.¹⁸¹ In the following year, while staffs at some offices remained stable, at others women were leaving faster than they could be recruited, and again there was a shortage of telegram delivery staff.¹⁸² By 1946, with regulars streaming back, many of the temporary women were leaving or being eased out, though some obtained permanent positions.¹⁸³ Outdoor delivery work remained popular with women, and postgirls of the 1980s are probably unaware that till 1942 this was a man's job.

In the Railways before the war, women on typing, clerical and refreshment duties numbered 627 in a total staff of 25 765.¹⁸⁴ As they occurred, various clerical vacancies were filled by women, and early in 1941 a few girls were even started on skills such as plan-tracing. Pay was not excessive: towards the end of 1943 at Wellington full-time shorthand typists were offered £80–£165 a year as starting salary, and office assistants with a knowledge of typing £65– 165, according to age and qualifications, plus cost of living bonus and a lodging allowance for juniors obliged to live away from home;¹⁸⁵ there were, however, worthwhile travelling concessions after three months' service. Towards the end of 1941 women appeared at parcels and reservations counters¹⁸⁶ and, on 13 January 1942, the Press reported that in the Christchurch railway district more than 23 per cent of the total office staff were women, where previously there had been only a few typists. In April 1942 they moved out from the desks and counters: strong women of 21–35 years were invited to work as porters and guards' assistants, wearing navy serge frocks similar in design to WWSA uniforms, with three large pockets, an action back, silver buttons down the front and peaked caps.

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Wages were £3 a week, plus cost of living bonus, for a 40-hour week, on rotating shifts between 6 am and 10 pm.¹⁸⁷ In place of the traditional training—following an old hand around—they had a short course on signals, distances, fares and the issuing of various written tickets. They could not become guards.¹⁸⁸

Women's traditional cleaning skills were first applied to trains in March 1943 at Auckland, when 26 women were chosen from 100 applicants. In trousered overalls, they worked an eight-hour day and a 40-hour week, with one day off in rotation each week (plus Sundays) and a three-day weekend every six weeks. With cost of living and shift allowances, they were paid £4 5s a week. Despite the Union wish that they should have equal pay, their rate was ls 9d an hour, while male cleaners got 2s 4d, but they shared the privilege of paid annual holidays and free travelling for themselves and their families.¹⁸⁹

In all, by mid-1943, the Railways had taken on 1400 women in a total staff of 22 550¹⁹⁰ and this was the peak figure. Much railways work was too muscular, too dangerous for women and needed more all-round experience than they could readily acquire. Railway manpower tangles were eased somewhat in mid-1943 by the return from overseas of the skilled men of two demobilised railways operating companies.¹⁹¹

Since 1938 there had been legal provision for having women on general duties in the police force, but not until mid-1941, with the war's social problems noticeably increasing, were the first 10 accepted for training, from 150 applicants. They were between 30 and 35 years of age, physically fit, with full powers to arrest. By September 1941, Auckland and Wellington each had three plain clothes policewomen, while Christchurch and Dunedin each had two, concentrating on the detection of sly-grog, especially in night-clubs and dance halls, where they could gain admittance as patrons; on juvenile delinquency, women's welfare work, venereal disease, and park duty. They also handled problems arising from association with the troops, such as women haunting hotel lounges when they should have been at work in essential industries.

As policemen were barred from the armed services, it being considered that they were more valuable in their own work, women did

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not invade the police force as they invaded business and public services. Concern about young girls in the cities, children on the streets late at night and sexual irregularities argued for more policewomen.¹⁹² Another 12 were distributed by February 1943, while Auckland, which was described as a garrison city, received eight more in March 1944.¹⁹³

The interplay between customary attitudes and the demand for labour was finely developed in the trams. During 1914–18 in Britain women had boarded the buses as conductors, and from 1940 photographs showed their return, brisking about London double-deckers. The Auckland WWSA suggested, in October 1940, that some women should be trained for work on the trams but the Auckland Transport Board, with more firmness than tact, said that the time was not appropriate, there was no shortage of men, indeed there was a waiting-list, and women were needlessly trying to get into uniform. For the WWSA Mrs W. H. Cocker replied that the Board would not admit that an emergency could occur except after adequate notice.¹⁹⁴

By mid-1941 there was a shortage of conductors, with passengers waiting at stops while grossly over-crowded trams clanked past. Wellington's City Council, while admitting the future probability of using women, wanted to delay the extra expenditure on ‘restrooms and so on’ for as long as possible by having men on overtime at rush hours. Several councillors questioned the delay, and Mrs Knox Gilmer declared that women would not want grand restrooms.¹⁹⁵

In January 1942, and again in April, the New Zealand Tramwaymen's Union rejected the combined transport authorities' proposal that their members should work longer hours at ordinary rates, as an alternative to the employment of women. The latter, said the Union, would be preferable to losing the 40-hour week. Further, as their award did not specify that conductors must be male, any change in pay or conditions simply because a conductor was a female would be regarded as a breach of the award.¹⁹⁶

In February the government authorised a six-day week for tramway men, with the extra day at time-and-a-half.¹⁹⁷ Auckland authorities, while assuming that 120 women would be needed to

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do the work of 100 men, reckoned that even so it would be 30 per cent cheaper to employ women than to work men on the sixth day; they therefore resolved to take on women when the cost of the sixth day became large enough to warrant the building alterations involved.¹⁹⁸ By then, amid the pressure of defence works and air-raid shelters, the separate messrooms and conveniences envisaged at surburban terminals¹⁹⁹ were a tall order, mainly postponed. But, when