50+ Photos Of Women At Work During World War II

World War II created several job opportunities for women that had never before been open to women, especially in the military and defense industry. When men went to war, women were called upon to fill their vacant job, which included many jobs that were previously thought unsuitable for women. Approximately 350,000 American women joined the military during World War II. To recruit women for factory jobs, the government created a campaign called “Rosie the Riveter.” Over 1.2 million Canadian women had permanent jobs in the private sector during WWII. More than 800,000 women served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war, roughly 3 percent of total military personnel. Some women worked in factories and made bombs, assembled aircraft parts, driving tanks, while others worked as chemists and engineers. Thousands of women also recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. We here at Bygonely have compiled a list of historical photographs that show women at work during WWII.

#1 A group of mostly women war workers stand, many with their fingers in their ears, on the sand of a coastal test range to watch as several soldiers launch mortar bombs, 1943.

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#2 A group of war workers stand in a row on a grassy hill on a coastal test range to watch mortar bombs being launched, 1943.

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#3 In November 1944, four female Italian anti-Fascist fighters relax as they await orders from their commander during their effort in support of Allied troops on the Castelluccio front.

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#4 Finland during World War II, some 242,000 women join Lotta-Svard (named for a fictional Finnish battlefield heroine), making the female paramilitary group the largest volunteer organization in the world.

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#5 Eleanor Roosevelt talking with woman machinist during her goodwill tour of Great Britain, 1942.

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#6 A Merlin Is Made- the production of Merlin engines at a Rolls Royce factory, 1942.

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#7 Rachel Bingham scrubs the floor of the WVS canteen on her return to the Canteen Service depot, somewhere in London in 1941.

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#8 Women of the American Ambulance Great Britain wash an ambulance car of the surgical unit to pass the time between call-outs at their depot, somewhere in London, 1944.

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#9 A woman of the American Ambulance Great Britain receives a telephone call requesting their attendance at an incident, 1944.

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#10 Before they leave the depot to attend an incident, women of the American Ambulance Great Britain look at a map to plan their route. A telephone call has just been received to say that several of their ambulances are needed, 1944.

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#11 A police officer has his hand bandaged by women of the American Ambulance Great Britain following a V1 attack in Upper Norwood. The original caption states that the policeman’s hand was injured by flying glass, 1944.

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#12 Women of the American Ambulance Great Britain prepare stretchers for casualties following a V1 attack in the Highland Road and Lunham Road area of Upper Norwood.

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#13 A textile worker stands at the spinning mule. The wooden rollers are transferred from the condenser to the spinning mule which is the means of twisting and stretching.

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#14 A Merlin is made: the production of Merlin engines at a Rolls Royce factory, 1942.

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#15 Miss Winifred Small (left) is a BBC soloist and professor at the Royal Academy of Music. Here she can be seen giving a violin lesson to a female first year student at the Academy, 1944.

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#16 Cotton worker Lilian Alston fits cones of yarn into the V-shaped creel of the warping frame at a cotton mill, somewhere in Lancashire, 1945.

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#17 A busy scene in the Treatment Room of the First Aid Post, set up in a room in a school, probably Mary Boon School, on the corner of Earsby Street and Bishop King’s Road, near Avonmore Road, London, 1942.

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#18 Female workers at an armament depot at a Royal Naval Cordite Factory, Holton Heath.

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#19 An elderly female munitions worker at the Royal Naval Cordite Factory at Holton Heath counts sticks of cordite before they are packed by her colleague into boxes ready for distribution to various naval armament depots.

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#20 Workers at the small factory of J & F Pool Ltd operate lathes to bore and face the nose ends of mortar bombs, 1943.

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#21 A director, possibly Mr Franklyn Pool, of J & F Pool Ltd reads a telegram from the Ministry of Supply to the workers gathered on the factory floor, congratulating them on the production of their 1 millionth mortar bomb, 1943.

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#22 Women war workers from J & F Pool Ltd, a small West Country arms factory, travel to a test range in a Universal carrier, Mark I, 1943.

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#23 Women war workers from J & F Pool Ltd, a small West Country arms factory, travel to a test range in a Universal carrier, Mark I, 1943.

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#24 Rose Pillon offers advice to a passengers from the ‘Tickets and Information’ window at this London Underground station, 1942.

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#25 Lilian Carpenter and Vera Perkins drive their horse-drawn cart through London’s West End on the way to their first delivery of the day, 1943.

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#26 Shipbuilding: Female welders at work on a merchant ship at Greenock, 1945.

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#27 Cordite production at a Royal Naval armaments factory at Holton Heath, 1945.

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#28 Shipbuilding: Mrs Agnes Smith, a fifty year old mother of ten, was a forewoman of a Greenock shipbuilding yard.

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#29 Hawker employees Winnie Bennett, Dolly Bennett, Florence Simpson and a colleague at work on the production of Hurricane fighter aircraft at a factory in Britain, in 1942.

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#30 A group of new recruits dressed in overalls and head scarves and carrying their gas masks are met by the female supervisor at Slough Training Centre as they enter the workshop for the first time, 1941.

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#31 Betty Pridie receives some first aid for a sore finger from her female supervisor in Slough Training Centre’s medical room, 1941.

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#32 Women’s voluntary service run Children’s Clothing Exchange, Norwood, London, 1943.

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#33 Water-cooled machine guns just arrived from the USA under lend-lease are checked at an ordnance depot in England, 1941.

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#34 Some 72,000 women would join the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service), freeing British sailors for combat duty by taking on home front jobs, like this Wren, an armorer at a Scottish Royal Air Force Base.

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#35 Servicemen, like these GIs in Germany in early 1945, adored Marlene Dietrich, and openly admired her fearlessness when visiting troops far from the safety of Hollywood.

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#36 Gower, shown at her base in Hatfield, Berkshire, created the Air Transport Auxiliary’s Women’s Section, a squad entrusted with ferrying planes for training purposes.

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#37 Looking out for enemy aircraft in England.

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#38 Women are on the front lines of World War II from day one, like these firefighters trying to contain the blaze during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

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#39 Reporting the position of enemy aircraft to gun crews

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#40 Nancy Nesbit, a pilot trainee in the Women’s Flying Training Detachment checks with the control tower from the cockpit of her single engine Army trainer at Avenger Field in Texas.

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#41 Phyliss Jarman, a pilot trainee in the Women’s Flying Training Detachment, wearing her favorite white baseball cap, writes up a report in her workbook during training to fly for the Women’s Auxilary Ferrying Squadron at Avenger Field in Texas.

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#42 Pilot trainee Shirley Slade she sits on the wing of her Army trainer at Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas, July 19, 1943. In September, Slade graduated as part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots Class 43-5.

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#43 The 90,000 members of the U.S. Navy’s WAVES (Woman Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) would serve only on the home front, but they would still get marksmanship training.

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#44 The women who volunteer for the U.K.’s Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS) are not allowed to fight in World War II, but they do nearly every other job, like this woman at an anti-aircraft emplacement in Britain.

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#45 As Britain defends Gibraltar in May 1944, members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (soon to become the Women’s Royal Army Corps) train as controllers of gun batteries.

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#46 Women’s Air Corps

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#47 A Member of America’s Women’s Air Corps (WACs)

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#48 Pilots of a Spitfire fighter squadron, wearing their life-vests to be ready to take off at any time, take part in a clay pigeon shoot. An officer of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force assists them by operating the clay pigeon trap.

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#49 “Land Girls,” volunteers in the Women’s Land Service, who will replace male farm workers sent to battle, are among the 20,000 volunteers marching before King George VI in this 1939 parade in Hyde Park, London.

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#50 A sergeant drills civilian women, members of the Women’s Home Defence Corps, in the use of rifles.

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#51 These women, shown at a their barracks, are among the 20,000 who received riflery training in China’s army so far during World War II.

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#52 WAC officers and other survivors on board a rescue destroyer after their transport ship was torpedoed in the ocean near North Africa.

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#53 A female Russian soldier grins broadly while showing off her medals and a US Army Officer’s insignia pinned to her shirt after the Allied troops met following the fall of Berlin.

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#54 American soldiers and war correspondents join male and female Red Army soldiers in Torgau, Germany, on April 27, 1945, toward the end of the European war.

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#55 Soong Mei-Ling, the U.S.-educated wife of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek, reads of Japan’s surrender to the Allies in August 1945.

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#56 Three salesgirls from the Bourne and Hollingsworth department store in London, auxiliary members of the Womens Land Army, pick beans for the war effort.

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#57 Cicely Clark is one of 4,900 members of The Women’s Timber Corps, dubbed “lumberjills,” at work in a timber camp in 1942 in Suffolk, England as part of the war effort.

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#58 In 1943, a female steel worker welds a steel plate at the Gary Armor Plate Plant of Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation, Gary, Indiana.

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#59 A group of war workers stand, on a grassy mound at a coastal test range to watch as soldiers launch mortar bombs from the beach immediately below them, 1943.

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