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Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Cultural History of Modern War): Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Cultural History of Modern War)
 
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Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Cultural History of Modern War): Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War (Cultural History of Modern War) (Paperback)

by Penny Summerfield (Author), Corinna Peniston-Bird (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Manchester University Press; illustrated edition edition (31 Mar 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0719062020
  • ISBN-13: 978-0719062025
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.8 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 370,372 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

About the Author

Penny Summerfield is Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester Corinna Peniston-Bird is Lecturer in History at the University of Lancaster

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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Mum's Army?, 11 Dec 2007
By Pillboxer1940 (Walmington-on-Sea, UK) - See all my reviews
Immediate post-war unit histories, together with a recent rash of general and collectors' books, mean that the once sketchy knowledge we had of the Home Guard has now been replaced with quite a wide library of information. However, as university academics Summerfield and Peniston-Bird argue, one particular area of Home Guard history that has been overlooked is the role of women in the force.

Is this deliberate male chauvinism underplaying the role women played in the force? Arguing from a largely feminist viewpoint, their answer is perhaps unsurprisingly, mainly `yes'.

The authors also examine from a sociological angle the role TVs Dad's Army has had on popular memory of the Home Guard. They reveal the contradictory wartime portrayals of the force: on the one hand brave defenders of Britain, yet the butt of music hall jokes on the other. The struggle for influence on the force, between left- wing activists and the conservative military top brass is also explained.

As the author's reveal, prominent women such as MP Edith Summerskill lobbied hard to have women accepted into the Home Guard. But unlike Russia, where desperate need meant everyone who could fight was accepted, the arming of women in Britain went against social mores. As a result, Summerskill set up the unofficial Women's Home Defence organisation, in effect a women's volunteer force that trained with arms. It wasn't until 1943, after much wrangling and a deep manpower shortage, the War Office reluctantly allowed women into the Home Guard in a non-combatant role as Auxiliaries.

There is, however, a flaw to the authors' basic argument that women have been deliberately sidelined and written out of Home Guard history. They argue that the women's role in the force was as important as the men. This, rightly or wrongly, is not the case.

Women only made up a fraction of the Home Guard, sometimes as few as only five in a battalion of over a thousand men. Their mainly office roles meant that most of the men hardly ever saw them, so very few actually knew women existed in the force, hence the women's `forgotten' or unknown position in the history today: this was not a deliberate chauvinistic plot by men to write women out of the Home Guard's history. And, as the authors state themselves, some Home Guard commanders deliberately ignored War Office regulations and trained the women in forbidden practices such as arms training.

However, this is an important book. Well researched, with over 30 former Auxiliaries interviewed, numerous archives and sources consulted, plus extensive footnotes, this work adds another side to the Home Guard story that was in danger of passing unrecorded.
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