From the Archives

Want to swap your World War 2 army uniform for a vocation in the church?

As World War 2 was drawing to a close, the Church of England in Australia was already planning what vocations its women members might embrace in peace-time.

This booklet calls for women who had been in the armed services during WW2 to swap their uniforms for the mission field!

There are suggestions that women consider putting themselves forward to be trained as Sunday School teachers, missionary schoolteachers and nurses, workers in children’s homes, deaconesses for Bush Church Aid, the Church Army, or even to enter one of the many Anglican women’s religious communities of the time.

Although the areas of church work suggested are all in “traditional female areas”, and the language used about mission is clearly of its time, the booklet does seem to suggest that the Australian church at that time was beginning to prefigure the later women’s movement as it sought to capitalise on and extend women’s wartime work experience, rather than suggesting they return to their homes, marry, and start families.