Demobilising the Military Woman: Constructions of Class and Gender in Britain after the First World War

After the end of World War I, working-class women were reluctant to return to prewar jobs in domestic service and poorly paid work. The British Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) suggested a possible model for a Women's Legion Household Service that would create a pool of domestic service workers managed by the traditional elite middle- and upper-middle-class women who had been WAAC officers. Neither the Women's Legion nor a proposed women's reserve ever materialized, but both proposals represented postwar attempts to return to prewar class and gender hierarchies.