Doctoral Degrees (History)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/623

Browse

Browsing Doctoral Degrees (History) by browse.metadata.advisor "Fransch, Chet James Paul"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    More than just pretty girls in uniform : a historical study of women's military roles during World War II, 1939-1945
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-03) Kotze, Este Mari; Fransch, Chet James Paul; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The Women’s Auxiliary Defence Corps (WADC) was created in 1940 and consisted of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Service (WAAS), Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and Women’s Auxiliary Naval Service (WANS). The members of the WADC served as auxiliaries to the South African Army, Air Force and Naval Service. Despite more than 21000 white women enlisting in the WADC, the roles played by South African women during World War II, has been largely overlooked in the historiography. In contrast, there is a growing international scholarship surrounding the participation of women in World War II. These works focus on, amongst other things, the complex and interrelated factors that limited women’s military service as merely “auxiliary”. This thesis aims to investigate the roles played by white South African women in the WAAS, WAAF and WANS within the broader military structure of the Union Defence Force (UDF). It also aims to show how these roles changed over the course of World War II. It asks a very simple question: How auxiliary were these service women? Archival documentation and testimony from service women relating to the founding, organisational structures, training and deployment of the three branches of the WADC are therefore analysed. This is positioned within the local and international historiography on women’s auxiliaries in Britain, the United States, Russia and other allied nations to compare and contrast the experiences of woman auxiliaries in different national and military contexts. Furthermore, this case study is situated in the historiographical debates on military culture, military masculinity and civilian femininity, the war taboo and the double helix of gender. This dissertation demonstrates that participation in the UDF was confined by the complex intersection of race, class and gender, and the upholding of prevailing socio-political hierarchies. The UDF essentially functioned as a microcosm of South African society and this restricted the level to which these women could break beyond the proverbial “brass ceiling”. This is not to suggest that their actual roles were strictly confined by these parameters as the manpower pressures of the war necessitated a degree of flexibility, allowing women to take on what was deemed a male role. Nor does it mean that they perceived their own service on these terms. The dissertation argues that the role of the auxiliary changed over the course of the war not necessarily because of a change in organisational structure, but rather as a result of the unpreparedness of the UDF at the onset of WWII. This provided an opportunity for the male divisions of the army, airforce and navy to have a level of influence on the trajectory of the corresponding women’s auxiliary services placed under their administration. This provided an opportunity for women in each of these arms to move beyond the level of pure auxiliary, culminating with one division of the WANS becoming active combatants. Thus, the evolution occurs across, as well as within, those divisions. The boundary between auxiliary and combatant is, therefore, more porous than the terms suggest. From this, the dissertation identifies six steps in an auxiliary/combatant spectrum and argues that it is not simply the war taboo of the UDF which had to be overcome by these women but, in addition, the way in which the historiography continues to relegate their contributions into the realm of the auxiliary, becomes the contemporary battle which must be challenged and reimagined.