A young woman making brass fittings, SA, 1943
This photo shows a young woman making brass fittings for military tanks. This was taken in 1943 in South Australia by Smith, D. Darian. When World War One started, it was uncommon for women to have jobs, and it stayed that way for a while. But by 1942 as the Second World War broke out and continued, Australian women were given jobs out of necessity.
The woman in the photograph is doing a job many would've have been doing at that time. After the call for women to fill in for the missing men, hundreds and thousands of women performed hard physical labour. Other jobs included manufacturing ammunition and other various equipment that was needed for the war and agricultural farming that the AWLA (Australian Women's Land Army) took up.
Although they obtained the right to work in “men’s jobs”, they were still discriminated as women received a far lower pay rate than the males who worked in the same job. At the end of the war, women were expected to give up their jobs for men who returned home from war, and many were persuaded back t being wives and mothers.
The woman in the photograph is doing a job many would've have been doing at that time. After the call for women to fill in for the missing men, hundreds and thousands of women performed hard physical labour. Other jobs included manufacturing ammunition and other various equipment that was needed for the war and agricultural farming that the AWLA (Australian Women's Land Army) took up.
Although they obtained the right to work in “men’s jobs”, they were still discriminated as women received a far lower pay rate than the males who worked in the same job. At the end of the war, women were expected to give up their jobs for men who returned home from war, and many were persuaded back t being wives and mothers.