'Miss Betty Crawford cutting steel plates with an oxygen and gas cutter - one of the vital jobs of shipbuilding in one of Britain's giant yards', 1941 (c)

Photograph, World War Two, Home Front (1939-1945), 1941 (c).

For the first two years of World War Two thousands of women volunteered for essential work in order to release men for service in the armed forces. By 1941 however, it was clear that volunteers alone were not going to meet the demands of wartime production. In December of that year the National Service Act made the conscription of women legal. At first, only single women aged 20-30 were called up, but by mid-1943, almost 90 per cent of single women and 80 per cent of married women were employed in essential war work.

One of 58 Official photographs depicting scenes from the British Home Front, 1940-1941.