Femmes, guerre et cinéma au Royaume-Uni de 1939 à 1945 : une remise en question radicale des stéréotypes liés au genre ?

The Second World War was a key turning point in the history of British women's representation in film. This article reviews the official numbers of women and employment during the war to show at what point women started playing an essential role in the war effort.  It next examines how the cinema worked in parallel to this appeal to women in showing on the screen the new roles presented to women while at the same time continuing to support traditional attitudes of women's role in society. By analyzing a large variety of films produced during the war – fiction, documentaries, films produced by the military – one witnesses the birth of a new type of movie heroine: the heroine of war--innovative, courageous, proactive, but ultimately still respectful of traditional male and female roles. This article concludes by interrogating to what extent film makers perpetuated these gender roles after the war.