IN CIVIL JOBS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 171, 22 July 1942, Page 3

IN CIVIL JOBS

THEY CAN DO IT

GIRLS HELP WAR EFFORT

Apart from the three services the jobs now open to women in civil life in Britain are seemingly .limitless. There is practically no weapon of war being manufactured in England which women are not helping to make. Thousands of them are employed in shipyards, where they drive cranes, use oxy-acetylene and electric welders, prepare and sling red-hot rivets and so on.

At a North Midlands factory allwomen gangs, with women supervisors, are repairing crashed Service planes. They dismantle the damaged aircraft, fit new parts, and where necessary reassemble the machine. Girls are now producing their own aeroplanes in increasing quantities, and soon a works devoted to reconditioning trainer aircraft will be staffed almost entirely by women.

The Ministry of Supplv has formed a Women's Timber Corps as part of the effort to increase timber production in Britain. The recruits receive instruction at a big training camp in Suffolk. Thev are housed in long lines of huts arid, tutored by experts, learn how to fell the smaller trees, to make pit-props, necessary in any drive for more coal, and to carry out all the varied work of timber production. One hundred and twenty members of a Sussex Townswomen's Guild are being given courses of instruction in the various branches of household repairs and interior decorating. They attend lectures on

plumbing, electrical repairs, papering, distempering, painting, floor staining, and other such jobs normally done by men. Some women are being trained by ex-detectives attached to Government Departments to catch Black Market racketeers. Already they have proved most successful in getting vital evidence for Black Market prosecutions. Girls, it is contended, arouse less suspicion than men when making inquiries. Their identities are kept secret and they rarely appear in Police Court proceedings. It has taken a war to show us that women are willing to and can do exceptionally skilled jobs. British women have actively proved it and have found inspiration in the performance.