Gender and the Second World War Lessons of War

Showing how gender history contributes to existing understandings of the Second World War, this book offers detail and context on the national and transnational experiences of men and women during the war. Following a general introduction, the essays shed new light on the field and illustrate methods of working with a wide range of primary sources.

CORINNA PENISTON-BIRD is Senior Lecturer at the University of Lancaster, UK

EMMA VICKERS is Senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, UK

PART I: GENDER IDENTITIES AND THE FORCES
1. Battling Contested Air Spaces: The American Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II; Sarah Myers
2. 'Women don't want us anymore'. Militarism and Masculinity in the Italian War; Lorenzo Benadusi
3. Sanctuary or Sissy? Female impersonation as entertainment in the British Armed Forces, 1939-1945; Emma Vickers and Emma Jackson

PART II: CONFORMITY AND DISRUPTION ON THE HOME FRONT4. CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION IN WARTIME? Welsh Mining Communities and Women in Munitions Factories; Ariane Mak
5. Gender and Nazi Espionage: Hildegard Beetz, the Ciano Affair, and Female Agency; Katrin Paehler
6. Regulating Marriage: Gender, the Public Service, the Second World War and Reconstruction in Britain and Canada; Helen Glew

PART III: THE MEETING OF MILITARY AND CIVILIAN IDENTITIES
7. 'The saddest symptom of our time': Bigamy cases in Vienna after the Second World War; Helen Steele
8. 'Being a Real Man': Masculinities in Soviet Russia during and after the Great Patriotic War; Robert Dale
9. Pacific Partners: Gendered Memories of the US Marines in Melbourne, 1943; Kate Darian-Smith
10. Conflicted Memories: Images, Realities and Politics of Male Homosexuality in France during the Second World War; Florence Tamagne

PART IV: REPRESENTING GENDER IDENTITIES
11. Peculiar Poster Girls: Images of Pacifist Women in American World War II Propaganda; Katherine Jellison
12. Beyond the Dichotomy of Prostitutes versus Sex Slaves: Transnational Feminist Activism of 'Comfort Women' in South Korea and Japan; Sachiyo Tsukamoto
13. The Visual as Memory: Gender, Memory and Chinese Political Cartoons in the Second Sino-Japanese War; Danke Li