By the outbreak of World War I, music halls embodied British popular culture through nightly performances seeking to appeal to and display the viewpoints and preferences of the working classes. Music halls immediately adopted pro-war sentiments and incorporated them into their reputation of being, in historian John Mullen’s words, “rapid, racy, and funny, always ready to mock the latest fashions or gadgets.”1 Their lively atmosphere preserved traditional pre-war viewpoints, especially gender dynamics, which remained intact throughout the war. Singers quickly integrated new World War I songs with popular pre- war music in the midst of the various hall performances such as operas, bands, and acrobatics. The singers additionally maintained traditional themes like the stereotypical portrayal of women as naïve potential lovers or deviant seductresses. Although the female expectations of home/motherhood, love/marriage, and female objectification/promiscuity remained popular hall themes, the entrance of women into the wartime work industry produced a peculiar selection of music hall songs conflicting with traditional gender portrayals. These songs uniquely championed women for their wartime involvement. Despite many historians’ disregard of songs thanking wartime employed women on account of their relative rarity, the creation of popular music thanking women raises the pertinent question: To what extent did World War I alter the portrayal of women in British popular song? Through an analysis of war- time hall songs, this study will argue that while the majority of wartime hall music reinforced customary gender interpretations, a distinct yet limited number of songs challenged gender stereotypes by celebrating women’s wartime work.
This comparative study of gender dynamics in British wartime song was inspired by British historian John Mullen’s invaluable primary source analysis and secondary literature on British wartime song. Mullen’s investigation and categorization of over 1,000 British wartime songs and personal media contributions provided this essay with a preliminary list of wartime hall music and audio recordings showcasing Britain’s cultural perception of women. Using Mullen’s work for reference, I located wartime songs and their lyrics through music databases such as Monologues and investigated popular songs performed by English, Irish, Scottish, and Australian music hall celebrities such as Vesta Tilley, Marie Lloyd, Harry Lauder, John McCormack, Florrie Ford, and Earnest Pike. I also found wartime British songs portraying women through online World War I music playlists uploaded on YouTube.
This study draws upon both the lyrics of British popular music, and, if applicable, online media listening of forty-one British wartime songs. Even though some lyrics were readily available online, I transcribed others from YouTube media if online lyrics were unavailable. I carefully re-read the lyrics to wartime music whose online lyrics were only available for later renditions while listening to the wartime recordings to ensure that the lyrics were identical and could be used for this study. Additionally, I included pre-war songs in this study to accurately investigate British wartime popular culture as music halls during World War I regularly performed pre-war music. I simultaneously drew upon works by cultural historians to reconstruct a framework of early twentieth-century British gender expectations, against which the songs are thematically compared. By examining gender portrayals in wartime British popular music, this study compares traditional female stereo- types in wartime songs to the musical reactions of women in the war- time workforce.
Music halls popularly dominated British social life since the late nineteenth century through their authentic and darkly humorous recognition and portrayals of lower-class struggles. As wealthy investors in the late 1890s forced the halls to become respectable establishments, self-deprecating and deadpan humor was the least subversive and most entertaining option for music halls to address the early twentieth-century issues of unions, industrialization, suffragists, and unmarried, poor men.2 Although halls originally acted as a forum for the working classes to unapologetically comment on their economic and lower social status struggles, by the eve of World War I music halls offered a variety of performances from singers, bands, and comedians, to dancers and acrobatics. The immediate adoption of pro-war themes and enlistment encouragement from the music halls led historians to argue that the darkly humorous establishments remained relatively un- changed as the communal lower-class atmosphere merely expanded to include wartime sentiments.3 Pre-war themes of lonely men, adoration of mothers, and humor toward mindless young women remained some of the most popular hall themes from 1914 to 1918, as they were distractions from the horrors of warfare.4 However, music halls were restricted from overtly expressing any negative expressions towards the horrific nature of World War I. The wealthy patrons demanded a respectable atmosphere within the entertainment venues, thus rejecting any negative lower-class sentiments toward the war. Although music hall audiences were limited in their critical self-expression, the halls remain one of the best representations of British popular culture, acting as the main source of entertainment and expression for the largest and poorest social classes.
Popular song played an instrumental role within the British halls through the direct participation it enabled between the audience and performers, usually through piano sing-alongs. John Mullen de- scribes popular song as “the way that generations of artists and audiences represent the world to themselves and to others.”5 Popular hall music entered daily British society as it was re-enacted by street performers, sold in sheet music on the streets, and sung in pubs.6 Throughout World War I, performances such as acrobatics were replaced with singers who promoted the war effort with humorous songs promising wives for men who enlisted and stressing the importance of women upholding the war effort while the men were away. By 1914, ninety-five percent of music hall songwriters were men, only one third of the performers were women, and the majority of songs appealed and adhered to the patriarchal standards of British culture and gender dynamics.7 Despite only one- third of popular wartime music directly addressing the war, Mullen’s exploration of 143 specific song titles out of thousands from 1914 to 1918 revealed that sixty-nine of the titles mentioned “home” or “England;” sixty-eight titles included the words “girl” or “lass;” “love” was mentioned forty-four times, and “mother” eighteen times.8 Even though the majority of songs were written by and for men, Mullen revealed that the overwhelming majority of hall music showcased traditional female stereotypes regarding the symbolic connection between women and the home, the excitement of love, the seduction of innocent men by deviant women, and the selfless love of mothers.
Gender dynamics in popular hall music created a perplexing dichotomy within British music halls by reaffirming yet challenging traditional female expectations. Although songs championing women workers contradicted stereotypical gender dynamics, the small number of women music hall stars overwhelmingly performed and supported music that upheld traditional domestic gender roles. For example, Marie Lloyd, a Cockney singer cherished by T.S. Eliot for her “capacity for expressing the soul of the people,” and Vesta Tilley, who earned her fame through cross dressing, played into stereotypical gender interpretations by criticizing uneducated, annoyingly independent, and sexually mischievous women throughout their performances.9 At least twenty songs were performed at every music hall evening, and many treated topics concerning British women.10 Regardless of a song’s interpretation of women, hall audiences were regularly listening to varying impressions of women portrayed as homemakers, mothers, simple-minded lovers, seductresses, and workers in wartime British society.
A dominating theme in the early twentieth century was the expected domestic roles of women as homemakers and child producers. Women were confined to the concept of the cult of domesticity: the be- lief that a woman’s natural place was solely at home, obeying her husband and raising children. Although a plethora of British women’s rights since the 1860s secured women new socio-economic freedoms— such as the right to own property and attend established universities such as Oxford and Cambridge—by the eve of World War I, British society overwhelmingly preferred that women center their lives around homes and families.11 The majority of British women also supported the cult of domesticity and believed that marriage and childbearing was their most honourable contribution to God and country. The home was seen as the most liberating location for a woman because she was free to run the household, raise children, manage family budgets, and per- form her natural caregiving roles.
Massive British casualties throughout World War I continued Britain’s encouragement of female reproduction. Wartime British propaganda, some even displayed in the music halls, labeled childbearing as the main feminine wartime priority besides marriage. While all forms of popular culture stressed the importance of the war effort—from enlistment and rationing to war donations—a woman’s ability to procreate was reinforced as her greatest patriotic duty. Historian Susan Grayzel commented on the prioritization of reproduction during World War I through the transformation of childbearing as a natural feminine role into a “woman’s first war duty.”12 Grayzel explained that even scientists and doctors justified female reproduction in relation to population sustainability. Doctors such as Dr. J. Bulberg concluded that a “woman’s main function in life is to perpetuate the human species.”13 Grayzel additionally argued that the portrayal of grieving mothers in- stead of female workers/nurses in the majority of World War I monuments exhibits the societal acknowledgement Britain has towards the Great War and mothers.14 While British society always reinforced the importance of women remaining in their domestic roles, World War I enforced a new emphasis upon British women to embrace their natural duties as physical representations of the home and motherhood.
Aligning with British societal expectations, wartime music hall songs showcased the importance of motherhood and the centrality of women to the home. Hall music exhibited Britain’s positive opinion toward mothers through songs conveying genuine kindness and adoration for married women who reproduce. While the majority of wartime hall songs embraced mockery and humor, especially toward single or working women, mothers were regarded with respect because of their direct contribution to Britain’s population. The admiration given toward women is heard in the 1916 song, “M-O-T-H-E-R: A Word That Means the World to Me.” The singer, Henry Burr, transformed the word moth- er into an acrostic explaining the natural qualities of love and devotion she provides for each of her children. Burr sang:
M is for the mercy she possesses
O means that I owe her all I own
T is for her tender, sweet caresses
H is for her hands that made a home
E means ev'rything she's done to help me
R means real and regular...15
Although women were routinely ridiculed in wartime music, this particular popular song expressed gratitude for women who embraced their most patriotic and natural duty.
In addition to motherhood, Britain’s cultural acceptance of the cult of domesticity is reflected in wartime songs portraying women as the emblem of home for their loved ones abroad fighting. A plethora of popular hall songs refer to women as a soldier’s symbolic home through their homesickness and yearning for their wives and girlfriends, most commonly living in Yorkshire, Picardy, and Tipperary. The songs also reinforce the specific gender expectation that a woman’s domestic role centers around her husband’s wishes and demands. Many of the songs instruct women to properly run the household while the men are off fighting. For example, in John McCormack’s 1917 version of “Roses of Picardy,” his lover embodies the roses of Picardy because, regardless of the distance between them, their love is the one rose in Picardy that will not die. He sings:
...Roses are flow'ring in Picardy
But there's never a rose like you
And the roses will die with the summertime
And our roads may be far apart
But there's one rose that dies not in Picardy!
'Tis the rose that I keep in my heart!16
Other songs reminded women of their obligation to obey their husbands, especially if they were serving. In the 1914 music hall song, “Keep the Home-Fires Burning,” the singer exhorts women to maintain the household in preparation for their husbands’ return from World War I. The song instructs women:
Keep the home fires burning
While your hearts are yearning
Though your lads are far away
They dream of home
There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining
Turn the dark cloud inside out
'Til the boys come home.17
Wartime hall music reinforced traditional British stereotypes by characteristically cherishing mothers while reminding women of their natural subservient roles to their husbands and homes.
Similar to traditional British gender dynamics, love and marriage were prominent themes associated with women throughout the early 1900s. In Britain’s male-oriented society, love and marriage were viewed as the key progression for women to embrace their proper role as wives and mothers. Romance was not a psychological aspect of life but instead a tool for men to establish their benevolent paternal role over single women whose naivety could only be solved through male guidance.18 The cultural notion that women were innocently lost or wrongfully independent until a man tamed them continued throughout the war. Grayzel argued that during the First World War, “being supportive sweethearts and mothers clearly took precedence over new opportunities for economic independence or even wartime service.”19 Yet, as World War I continued, love evolved from a method of domestication into a romantic and comforting sentiment that soldiers overseas could use for morale and as motivation. Mullen argued that by 1915, British society had begun to slowly accept the idea of love as a psycho- logical and romantic sentiment.20
Wartime popular song embodied the varying societal perceptions of love and gender dynamics. While some wartime popular songs reflect Britain’s slow acceptance of love as a romantic union between two people, the majority of songs reinforce the belief that women were, as Mullen says, “adorable but annoying when single,” with standard sarcastic and humorous hall tones.21 Because music about love was not a popular hall theme, most wartime songs implemented humor to mock how single women were completely lost or lovesick as they had no marital guidance while the men were away. Vesta Tilley’s wartime song, “Angels Without Wings,” embodies the customary comical tone imposed on the laughable stupidity women have towards love. Tilley explained how, despite a single woman’s naïve independence, after fall- ing in love she will alter her behavior and even go to extreme lengths to please her husband. Women were therefore angels as they conformed into the perfect subservient wives. The evolution of single women into ideal wives is witnessed as Tilley sang:
The little hussies are at home
Pencilling their eyebrows without shame...when we ask the size
They vow they wear size sixes with great ease
And they take 'em back next day, and to the shopman say
I'll have three sizes larger if you please
As time goes on we wed them, these darlings without wings
And call them ever after darling wife
They darn up all our stockings and they make our buttons fast
And comfort and console us throughout life . . .22
Tilley’s music thus reflects the social understanding of love as a civilizing instrument for men to provide benevolent guidance and convert a stupidly lost woman into a proper housewife and mother.
An additional song regularly performed by Tilley, “Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves A Soldier,” suggests that single women become so blinded by their need for male guidance through love that they daftly overlook male flaws, such as infidelity. Performed in her staple cross-dressing British soldier outfit, Tilley mocks women who fall in love with soldiers because their infatuation distracts them from the expected affairs all soldiers have when stationed abroad. She sang:
When you see them strolling by a soldier’s side
Who could ever be more proud than they?
Jolly good luck to the girls who love a soldier...
You know we military men
Always do our duty everywhere!”23
While the song only hints towards male impropriety to maintain music hall respectability, it demonstrates that love themes were solely directed at women as they were perceived to be the only ones truly affected by romantic relationships, unlike the soldiers who were only fulfilling their duties.
One of the rare wartime hall songs displaying romantic aspects of love was John McCormack’s, “The Garden Where the Praties Grow.” Originating in 1875 as an Irish folksong, this musical piece remained popular during World War I because it compared a man’s love for a woman to a garden. Their love first blossomed into marriage, and soon after more flowers bloomed in the garden in the form of their children. The infrequent use of love as a beautiful aspect of life instead of an indicator of feminine denseness is observed as McCormack sang:
Now the girl I loved was beautiful
I'll have you all to know
And I met her in the garden
Where the praties grow
She was just the sort of creature
That nature did intend
To walk throughout the world...24
Even though love was commonly used to mock women’s uneducated innocence, this song’s acceptance of emotional viewpoints of love coincided with Britain’s realization that the Great War would be a prolonged conflict.
In addition to motherhood and love, female sexual objectification was a prevalent British gender bias during the early twentieth century and World War I. Throughout most of British history, the value of women was based on their maidenhead status as they had a greater chance for marriage if they remained chaste. British culture, specifically the middle and upper classes, relied heavily on women maintaining their innocence until marriage since it protected property and dowry transfers between couples and was the only appropriate way a woman could fulfill her natural role as a wife and mother. By the outbreak of World War I, it was culturally embedded that a single woman’s worth was based on her chastity because she was foremost an object of future domestic life and childbearing. The sexual objectification of women therefore was utilized in propaganda to promote enlistment or to mock promiscuous women. One of the most common tropes in wartime British propaganda was the deliberate sexual abuse that enemy soldiers, especially Germans, inflicted on innocent civilian women. Historian Susan Kent Kingsley explains that British propaganda emphasized the sexual danger World War I posed to the maidenheads of women in occupied territories.25 By 1915 over two and a half million official publications and pamphlets describing the sexual brutalization of women circulated in seventeen different languages, overseas and in music halls. Kingsley refers to this propaganda as a “gendered international language of ‘just war.’”26 The concern in British propaganda was not for the overall safety of women in occupied areas, but instead the fear that virgin women would be sexually violated if more British men did not enlist.
The societal sexualization of British women throughout World War I is additionally observed in the vilification of single women as mischievous harlots who could not control their passionate urges while the men were gone, and the portrayal of women as seductresses motivating male enlistment. Single British women were scandalously portrayed in popular wartime art because men were not at home to regulate their behaviour. For instance, multiple satirical British postcards published drawings of two women kissing with the caption, “This is another job the men will want back when they come home!”27 In the wartime music halls, women were represented as sexual rewards for male enlistment. Despite the air of propriety British halls were meant to maintain, suggestive songs and risqué performers dominated nightly entertainment. Historian Peter Bailey believed one possibility for the music hall’s love of provocative songs emerged from growing pre-marital sexual relations beginning in the late nineteenth century as well as the in- creasing appearance of women in public roles.28 Additionally, Mullen’s analysis of Marie Lloyd’s popular wartime song, “I Do Like Yer, Cock- ie, Now You’ve Got Your Khaki On,”29 portrays how openly halls viewed women as sexual rewards for soldiers. Lloyd sang:
I’m going to give ver an extra cuddle tonight
I didn’t like you much before you joined the army, John
But I do like yer, cockie, now you’ve got yer khaki on!30
Popular music embodied wartime Britain’s frequent use of female sexual objectification to reward men for their patriotic service or insult the behaviour of independent women.
A multitude of less suggestive wartime songs were still adored in the music halls. For example, Florrie Forde’s, “There’s a Girl for Every Soldier,” explained how even the loneliest of men could still earn a woman if they enlisted. Forde sang:
He didn’t have a girl we often wished he had
Every girl he happened to meet had a soldier boy
There is a girl for every soldier, there is a girl for every soldier boy
They don’t know how to find them but you do do do...31
A similar trope of winning a woman through wartime service is ob- served in the 1915 song, “All the Boys in Khaki Get the Nice Girls.” “All the Boys” followed a man named John who lost his popularity among women during the Great War because he was not fighting. He finally decided to enlist after learning that all soldiers earn women simply for being in the military. The hall performer sang:
All the boys in khaki get the nice girls
And the boys in blue get the nice girls too
Maidens by the score
Flappers galore
Every time you give them a kiss they shout ‘Encore!’32
Despite the varying suggestiveness of hall songs, wartime music reflected the sexualization of women in British propaganda and popular culture.
Songs suggesting that only women lacked sexual control are documented in the song, “My Little Yorkshire Rose.” The song followed a conversation between two soldiers discussing their girlfriends back in England. After they realize they are seeing the same woman, both men agree to confront their girlfriend once they return to England. The song describes their confrontation:
To Rose, Rose, Rose
Meaning to make it clear
Which was the boy most dear.
Rose, their Rose, didn't answer the bell
But her husband did instead.33
Although this song does not display Rose as a sexual gift for their service, it hints that Rose’s adulterous behaviour is because of her independent lifestyle as a married factory worker. While British propaganda adopted a more serious tone toward the objectification of women, popular culture thrived on the stereotypes of untamed sexual behaviour applied to individualistic women throughout the war.
The final gender portrayal present in British wartime society and popular song was the visible presence of wartime-employed women from various socio-economic classes. Even though female workers were common among the lower classes prior to 1914, World War I mobilized women from the upper classes at unprecedented levels: over 500,000 women worked in commerce, 800,000 in industry positions, 400,000 in agriculture, 30,000 in banking positions, and 2,500 women worked as tram and bus conductors throughout the war.34 Wartime necessity disrupted the age and marital restrictions limiting young and unmarried women to specific roles such as typists, phone operators, and nurses by placing them into more masculine jobs such as trolley drivers, agricultural workers, spies, codebreakers, munition workers, and chemists.35 Although World War I gave women the opportunity to expand their professional abilities through non-domestic work, the majority of British society was quickly perplexed and baffled by female employees.
Because of the socio-economic independence the First World War offered women, British society cautiously yet contrastingly observed wartime workers either through the mockery of female employees who sought self-sufficiency or in reluctant wartime propaganda encouraging female employment out of wartime necessity. The British government originally relied on foreign refugees and prisoners of war to sustain the wartime economy, but by 1915 the costly reality of war- fare forced Parliament to accept women as essential economic contributors.36 While government propaganda began to promote female employment as a woman’s main patriotic duty besides procreating, the general British public, from trade unions to suffragists, rejected wartime women workers. For example, the willingness of women to work threatened male job security, leading unions to strike.37 Prominent suffragettes like Sylvia Pankhurst vehemently opposed female wartime employment as well, arguing that it exploited women because they were willing to work for lower wages in unsuitable environments.38 However, a small number of Britons tolerated and even supported female employment because they knew the economic freedoms women were receiving would immediately disappear once the war ended.
This confused yet strained acceptance of women workers is witnessed in popular hall music. Mullen argues that wartime songs reflected Britain’s societal uncertainty towards female employees because many feared working would corrupt women into abandoning their natural domestic roles to pursue careers and economic freedom.39 Yet, songs thanking women for their wartime contributions increased towards the end of the war. Although the halls overwhelmingly showcased traditional stereotypes of women as symbols of domesticity whose naivety could only be healed through marriage, music halls began to display confused appreciation towards women’s wartime involvement. Mullen additionally concludes that the majority of the songs were “intrigued or anxious about [women workers], and this cannot necessarily be categorized as a masculine voice of anxiety: there is ample evidence that women too were worried about the changes.”40 Even though music mocking female workers was most common, the songs cheering female employment reveal a discrepancy between traditional gender dynamics and music hall culture.
The ridiculing tone laughing at women who thought they accurately performed wartime jobs is implied in the 1914 song, “Kitty, the Telephone Girl.” The popular song explains how a female phone opera- tor wastes her time believing that she can be a legitimate employee when instead she could simply be a girlfriend. Continuously annoyed by her voluntary employment, her suitor Tommy one day explains:
...isn’t it a pity in the city you work hard...
Kitty Kitty isn’t it a pity that you’re wasting so much time
With your lips close to the telephone
When they might be close to mine.41
Additionally, the 1915 piece, “Which Switch Is the Switch, Miss, for Ipswich?” laughs at women who thought they held the intellectual capacity to be employed. The song, popular for its tongue twisting lyrics, mocks a female phone operator because she incorrectly connects the male singer’s call so many times that he begs her to teach him the switches so he can correctly connect his call. The song opens:
I just had a row with a telephone girl
A telephone girl, my brain’s in a whirl...
She got so mixed up with the switches it’s true
That I got annoyed and I cried tell me do
Which switch is the switch miss for Ipswich, it’s the Ipswich switch which I require...42
Although the majority of wartime music did not explicitly denounce female workers, most songs reinforced the traditional British gender bias that women were too uneducated to successfully complete non- domestic work.
A rare assortment of songs actually thanked women for their wartime participation. Mullen listed some of the scarce songs praising women for their wartime efforts: “Daughters of Britain, Work with a Will!,” “Raise a Cheer for the Women of Britain!,” “We Thank You, Women of England!,” and, “What Should We Do without Them (War Girls)?”43 Although these songs were not as popular and are virtually non-existent in most historiography, they were still performed and high- light an infrequent music hall reaction to women workers. One of these uncommon songs, “Women’s Work,” explained the new feminine touches women utilized in their new wartime positions of land girls, butcher shop employees, and members of the fire brigade. Even though the song included common stereotypes such as women uneducatedly struggling in their new positions, “Women’s Work” showcased women’s vigorous attempts to complete new roles, sometimes even relying on their feminine nature to perform well. The lyrics urge:
All the boys have gone so the girls today carry on with the work in the morning...
In the fire brigade the girls you’ll find to look quite smart
Will be inclined and to do their hair they will stay behind when the fire bell rings in the morning
...On the football field they learned to play in a new and fascinating way
...They will draw crowds in the morning
...When the post girl comes... like fairy queens
Their knocks are soft for they know what it means
To disturb baby boy in the morning.
...Although the jobs they got may not remain
When the time comes ‘round we shan’t complain
for they will be their old sweet selfs again when the boys come home in the morning.44
Songs such as “Woman’s Work” indirectly accept female employment, as they portray women trying their upmost best for Britain because everyone knows those positions will be gone when the men inevitably return home from war.
A plethora of reasons explain why British popular song produced music thanking women, even though those pieces remained so uncherished that they almost disappeared from British wartime music history. Historian Deborah Thom commented on the contradictory view of women in the workforce. She explained, “Women were increasingly seen as capable of great sacrifice, likely to threaten their own well- being and that of their culture, because they were too prone to believe in their mission to join in the war effort.”45 A minute group of wartime songs incorporated gender tropes such as love, marriage, and the sexual objectification in music about female workers. Because employers prioritized young and single women, they were unable to perform a woman’s most patriotic duty of motherhood. Therefore, female workers were performing their only feasible patriotic duty through employment because the sooner the war could be won, the more quickly society could return to its traditional state. If women contributed to the war effort, then soldiers could return home, recalibrating British society be- cause women would then return to domestic and submissive roles. The acceptance of female employees as a method to normalize the British state arises in the denunciation of women workers as soon as the war ended. Susan Grayzel charts shifting public reactions to female employment, as women who were repeatedly thanked for their wartime contribution in the final years of the First World War were immediately vilified if they did not quit their positions once the men returned home.46 Regardless of whether some women workers were conditionally thanked for their wartime contribution, a specific difference remained between British society’s overall dismissive ignorance towards female workers and popular music’s genuine praise of female employees.
British music halls throughout World War I overwhelmingly reflected the popular sentiments of the lower working classes. Pre-war music quickly diversified with new popular songs created to recognize social wartime upheavals such as the visible inclusion of women into the workforce and even into male positions. In spite of women regularly being represented in the stereotypical pre-war themes highlighting a woman’s natural duty in motherhood, a symbol of home, and a sexual reward for patriotically engaged men, a small number of wartime songs challenged British society’s traditional viewpoint of women by thank- ing women workers. Parliament’s forced support of female employment contrasted with British society’s overall ambivalence towards female employees, resulting in popular songs mostly teasing women for assuming they could work outside the home. Despite the popularity of dis- missive songs towards female employment, the unique set of songs thanking women for their wartime work displays a noteworthy difference between British society’s assumption of female employees and gender portrayal in popular song.
