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I'm Dr. Sarah-Louise Miller and I work in the field of Women's History particularly women working in wartime, military intelligence roles, and secret work.

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At the start of the 20th century, women are largely in the domestic sphere. You've got something called separate spheres ideology which means generally speaking, the men

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go out into the public sphere and they work and the women are supposed to stay at home and do domestic things and raise children and be wives and mothers.

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And for the most part at the start of the 20th century that is the way it is. Then you get the First World War which obviously changes things. And then in the interwar period, it's much back to business

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as usual, separate spheres again. And then you get the Second World War which changes things up again. There's a lot of change in the 20th century in terms

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of what women are doing inside and outside of the home and it's very much affected by war. When the First World War comes to Britain, it changes a lot about what it means to be a working

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woman in Great Britain. Before the war, they're very much in the-- and you do get women that go out to work before the war that's largely class related.

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So the working class women are more likely to be seen outside the home working to supplement income. And it's seen as a transgression almost for a woman

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to work outside of the home. But when the First World War comes and you have this massive manpower shortage, literally thousands and thousands of men

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are leaving to go and fight and it leaves a vacuum at home. And there are so many jobs that women have been completely barred from before the First World War that they then have to step into to keep the country

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functioning. And that looks like working in the military services, working in the transport sector, working in the postal system, lots and lots of different roles

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that they previously wouldn't have been allowed to do. But because of the special circumstance of war, both the First and Second World War, being a working woman changes.

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And it's almost expected, you have conscription in both of those wars which means women are made to work, they have to work. And it very much changes to something

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that is expected of them and they are not as harshly judged for it. Thereafter the Second World War, it's easy to think that the work women had done

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would have changed everything for them after the war. But in actual fact, it didn't. And at the end of the Second World War, a lot of those jobs that women have been doing

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are surrendered and given back to the men who come back from the war, which means a lot of the time that women are sent back to their domestic sphere. So they go back to working at home with the children,

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keeping the home tidy and all of the things that you would expect to see them doing in separate spheres situations, which is very difficult for them because they've been given this independence during the Second

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World War and they've largely very much enjoyed it. And then it's back to normal, back to what society saw as normal at the end of the Second World War.

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A lot of the elements of women's lives are affected by wartime labour. So before the war, you've got a situation where they're very much in the home and they're

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dealing with their husbands, with their children, sometimes friends, but they're very much domestically based, they're not out in public. And then in the Second World War they very much are out

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in public because it's the people's war, it's everybody working together united front in Britain to get through this mass conflict, this total war. And that means that they are out where other people are,

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where public issues are. They have more of a social life, they are going out and doing things that they haven't done before and maybe they're involved more in politics

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and they're working toward a massive political situation and that doesn't just automatically finish because the war has ended. So it's very much a case of widening their world

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essentially and seeing increasing involvement in public life. Personal writing is so important if we want to know about how women reflected

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on their wartime work. It's really the only way we can know in lots of situations because women's feelings and writings and how they processed what they had been

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through in the war doesn't appear anywhere else other than in what they have written or what they have said. And largely they reflect on their experiences from very much subjective angle how they felt, what they saw,

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what they experienced and they do that in all kinds of ways. So they talk about the joys of doing what they're doing through war, which might seem odd but for many of them, it's the first time they've left home,

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it's the first time they've had any independence. It's the first time that they have had money in their pocket to go out and spend on a social life. So for a lot of women, they had a very positive experience

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in war which is obviously tinged and pockmarked with sorrow and sadness and grief because there's constant loss, there is danger. When you live in a country that is under attack

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for at least part of the war, there is danger, there is risk. So there's fear and there's the sadness of knowing that someone you're related to or your sweetheart, someone you love

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has died or is at constant risk on a battlefield somewhere. So you've got this huge mix of feelings that they're processing and diaries are a fantastic way of having a window

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into their wartime experience. The war is often seen as a great equaliser. The home front is everywhere, so everyone's put in the same boat essentially but it's not right to consider that as

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equal in terms of employment opportunities, especially for women. Women are always paid less than men for doing essentially the same work that's just the way it is.

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Through the Second World War there are odd exceptions to that, but for the most part, there's a big pay gap. And inside of that, you've also got issues

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with class and indeed race. So something like the auxiliary territorial service which is the British Army for women essentially, there is an actual colour bar in place.

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So until 1943, Black women are not allowed to serve in that service, and it's not the only one there is a colour bar in place in lots of different employment instances. And then with class, if you're looking at secret work,

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for example, something like Bletchley Park or anywhere there's very, very secret intelligence work going on there, looking for what they call "good ladies" women from good families who are more

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likely to be able to keep secrets and they don't have this background that might cause them to be inclined to gossip. So there's very much a class issue there as well.

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And depending on the work that you're looking at, there's going to be some level of discrimination in terms of class and race. It's very easy and it's very tempting

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to look at what women did in the Second World War in terms of employment and think it changed everything for them. And it's easy to look at the Second World War and see it as a watershed in terms of opportunity

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and employment for women but that would actually be a mistake. It's very clear how useful women have been and that's not easily forgotten.

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It's conspicuous how good women are in a lot of the roles that they've previously been barred from. And you can't forget that example, it's such a massive example, there

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are millions of women who were mobilised in the Second World War and that's not easily forgotten, but it doesn't lead to immediate and lasting change. And it will be decades before that change is

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seen through and arguably in some ways, it's an ongoing process. So with the Women's Military Auxiliary services, for example, it's not until the 1990s

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that those are formally merged with the regular services, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and the British Army. So that is an ongoing process. It arguably begins in the First and the Second World War

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where women prove for the first time to society, to the British government, to the military services, and perhaps most importantly to themselves what they are actually capable of.

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They realise what they're capable of and they prove what they can do when it's been not estimated of them. They've been radically underestimated and war is a crucible in which their strength is proven.

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But it will take a long, long time for that to lead to lasting change. It's very clear in a lot of diaries and written resources and oral histories

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that women were quite disappointed at the end of the Second World War. If the opportunities that had been afforded to them and the special contingency of war

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were removed and for a lot of women they were, because those jobs went back to the men. And it's evident in the sources that they are disappointed and that they are sad to lose their independence

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and their camaraderie, that's something that really shines through a lot of these sources is how close they were with their fellow women. And they formed friendships that lasted a lifetime

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but they do mourn the loss of responsibilities and independence and opportunities that they have been given in this special time of war. And for a lot of people, this is the worst time of their lives,

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but for a lot of women in some ways it's the best because they have these options that they didn't have before and to lose those is devastating for a lot of them and that really comes through their writing.

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You can learn a huge amount from oral histories and diaries, and it's the information that we won't get anywhere else. When we look at files that are kept in National Archives, for example, the job of those files

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is to tell the story of a National War effort. And inside of them a lot of the time women are misinterpreted, misunderstood, underestimated. The work that they're doing is either incorrectly recorded

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or has been deliberately covered up for reasons of secrecy, which presents somewhat of a challenge for historians to understand exactly what women did during wartime and how they felt

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about it, their subjective approach to the Second World War. And that's important because women are 50% of the population and we need to understand that.

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We understand it much better where men are concerned and it's these sources that enable us to learn those lessons. Something I've been involved in a lot in my own research

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is trying to get to the bottom of what it was that women actually did during the Second World War and the implications of that work. And a lot of the time you'll see women in National Archives

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recorded in a less than accurate sense. So for example, with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, you might have a woman who's involved in very, very secret intelligence work recorded

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as a clerk, and that makes it sound like she's responsible for monitoring stationery supplies, when actually she's doing highly secret, highly important intelligence work behind the Royal Air Force's

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operations. So it takes a lot of digging to find out what she was actually doing. And a lot of that digging happens in oral histories

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and diaries where you're much more likely to find the answers to those questions. There are lots of fantastic oral history programmes that are going on at museums, at archives like the resource we're talking

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about here. They are all over the place, it can be tricky to find them. But once you do, they are gold mines of information. A lot of the big museums are running oral history programmes

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and you can access those online a lot of the time. Much of this has been digitised, some of it hasn't. It's an ongoing process, but it is definitely worth digging. Researchers should want to use oral history and personal

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reminiscence sources like diaries and things, because they tell us so many things that we cannot find anywhere else. They are very, very valuable in terms

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of lifting the lid on exactly what women did and what that meant and how they felt about it. And there are plenty of instances where there are major pieces of information that

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are very relevant to wider narratives that we won't find anywhere else, it's very, very important information. There are many, many challenges involved

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in recovering the history of women in wartime. Lots of those challenges are actually created by the special conditions of war. So in a time of war, the whole population

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has it drilled into them that secrecy is of paramount importance. So they are not allowed to talk about things that are relevant to the war, they're

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not allowed to write them down. They have to keep secrets because if they don't the enemy has an immediate advantage. And that secrecy, that level of secrecy continues after the war

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because people take that vow so seriously. And it's ironic because one of the reasons the government are so reluctant to use women in wartime roles is because they don't believe that they

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are capable of keeping secrets and you see it in the propaganda. Keep mum, she's not so dumb and in the careless talk campaign when you've got gossipy ladies on buses.

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And there's this assumption that women cannot and will not keep secrets. But the truth of the matter is, they were so good at keeping secrets that we

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have to really dig to find the truth where women in war are concerned. They were not quick to write books about their wartime work at the end of the war and actually when

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I've interviewed veterans, I have had to rephrase questions, I've had to go around the topic because they are still so intent on keeping those secrets. That's just one challenge, there are many, many others

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issues of nomenclature, so how they're recorded in records, issues with whoever's kept those records not really understanding what women are doing because they look at women and think, well, what they're doing

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can't possibly be important. It's not important enough to record, it's not important enough to get right in these records. So you have all of these challenges

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and it can make our work as historians very difficult, which is why projects and resources such as this are so important.