In this text we are going to discuss the role of the British women journalist in the Second War World and highlight the work of some recognized women.

Before the war, women journalists found it difficult to land jobs simply because they were female. World War II offered women reporters job opportunities and a chance to shine. Men were called to fight in the war, leaving their jobs open and only women left to fill them, though women reporters were criticized and stereotyped.

Women war correspondents also had to deal with more restrictions than men. For instance, women were not permitted to go further than women's services, such as de Red Cross Nurse's stations. Thus, they could not cover actual combat zones.

At the war's end, things in the newsroom started to go back to the way things were before the war. Some women kept their jobs, but their assignments shifted from front-page news back to the women's pages again. Women fought hard to report the war just to prove to everybody, especially their male colleagues, that they could. The war allowed female news writers to start reporting on a playing field of a higher level and started a movement towards more equal rights for women in the newsroom.

CLARE HOLLINGWORTH:

The most famous female English war journalist during World War II was Clare Hollingworth (England, 10 October 1911 – Hong kong, 10 January 2017).

Hollingworth had been working as a Telegraph journalist for less than a week when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth observed a massive build-up of German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland, after the camouflage screens concealing them were disturbed by wind. Her report was the main story on the Daily Telegraph's front page on the following day.

Later, Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, she held a telephone out of the window of her room to capture the sounds of German forces. Hollingworth's eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign Office received about the invasion of Poland.

Her efforts were hampered because women war correspondents did not receive formal accreditation. In 1943, she was ordered to return to Cairo. Wishing to remain at the front lines, she went on to cover General Dwight D. Eisenhower's forces in Algiers, writing for the Chicago Daily News.

WOMEN CORRESPONDENTS ACREDITED BY THE ARMY:

Seventy years ago, a group of American women journalists made history when they covered the greatest story of their generation. They called them the D-Day Dames. On 6th June 1944, the Allied forces invaded northern France by means of beach landings in Normandy. Like any major news event today, there was an extraordinary buzz among journalists waiting in the city, and a group of US women was part of it.

One of them was Martha Gellhorn. Her first experience of war reporting was in Spain in the 1930s, when she covered the civil war with her future husband Ernest Hemingway. They used to speak about her job: "Hemingway asked her: 'Why aren't you writing about the war?’ and she said: 'I don't know about weapons and battles.' Then he said: 'write about what you know, which is people'."

Another important D-Day woman journalist was Lee Miller, who took a different route to war reporting. She began her career as a model in the 1920s, but not content just to be photographed, she decided to become a photographer herself. Bored by fashion, she went out into the streets of London in 1940 during the Blitz to document the terrible devastation caused by aerial bombings. By 1942 she was accredited as a war correspondent for Vogue, which was thrilled to have its own writer who could tell a story of women and war, and much more. Miller photographed women playing many roles including nurses, charity workers, and the WRENS (Women Royal Naval Services).

They did it, not just because they were exceptional women, but because they were great journalists.

Here you have a link to an article in The Guardian about Lee Miller:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/22/lee-miller-war-peace-pythons

CONCLUSION:

To sum up, those women did a good job during the war. However, it wasn’t recognized when it finished. Anyway, war work made many women independent for the first time. Suddenly, they could earn their own money and spend it as they wished. In Pam Schweitzer’s words, “those who took over jobs formerly done by men, often found that their pay and status did not rise accordingly. The campaign for equal pay and opportunities still continues”.

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