The fourth service: duty and recognition in the Australian Women’s Land Army

Abstract

Throughout the duration of World War Two, members of the Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) were repeatedly assured that they were of equal status to the women’s auxiliary services. While they shared some conditions with the women of these services during the war, the explicit assurance that they would be officially rendered a fourth auxiliary service, and therefore eligible for all post-war privileges, rights and protections, never came to fruition. This article explores the ways in which members of the AWLA were led to believe that they should expect this legal recognition during the war, and traces the dissolution of these assurances as the war drew to a close. It also examines how this ambivalent legal status informed their wartime experience, and how members of the AWLA have been commemorated. It seeks to critically explore the rhetoric of obedience and control that informed the culture of the AWLA and the extent to which AWLA members were deliberately misled by their organisation’s ambiguous status to encourage wartime loyalty to service.