So I know many British women served on the crews of AA guns during WW2. But I heard somewhere (http://thefemalesoldier.com/blog/ack-ack-girls) that they weren't actually allowed to do any of the shooting. If this is true, what was the reasoning behind it? I mean they are already in harm's way, what's the point of not allowing them to shoot?
For reference, here is a number of nice pics of British ladies in gun crews. http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ATS-spotter-3.7-gun.jpg
http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ATS-spotter-1.jpg
The redemption and heroicization of the common soldier over the course of the 19th century dovetailed with entrenching ideas of masculine vigor and valor expressed through a militarized paradigm in and out of formal combat. Women participated in the same overall social valorization of military order and survivalism--women and men were partners in founding the Salvation Army, and girls as well as boys flocked to the newly invented summer camp. In the first decade of the 20th century, girls and their adult women sponsors forged their own Girl Scouts/Guides alongside the Boy Scouts! But women's participation in militarized valor needed to have its limits, scholars have argued, in order to preserve masculinity for men. (The formation of separate Girl Scouts, in fact, is a direct outgrowth of this, since the Boy Scouts organizer was not so enthusiastic).
So during World War I, public relations material/war propaganda loved promoting "girls" who served martial support roles, here in home front factories. Look at "girls" go, seizing the initiative and adopting (male) virtues of country and strength! ...BUT only if they were sufficiently feminine--extra feminized. Pamphlet drawings clothe "munitionettes" in layered skirts and Sunday bonnets, even as captions referenced their actual, infinitely more practical outfits of overalls, safety goggles, and hats to prevent their hair from getting dangerously in the way.
Clothing was symbolic, of course. The absolutely essential component of the masculine/feminine division was the taboo on women's participation in combat.
In the decades after the Treaty of Versailles, the taboo was healthy and thriving. Women served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service--but as, well, very "traditional women"--cooking and clerking and cleaning. But as Britain stared down the nervous geopolitical situation of the late 1930s, the exquisitely named Frederick Pile, the general in charge of Britain's antiaircraft batteries, did the math for fighting abroad and at home and came up short. He and women's rights activist/electrical engineer Caroline Haslett cooked up the strategy of drafting women into AA battalions through the ATS. And, crucially, the two drafted an argument that they hoped would lead to their plan's successful implementation.
The report enthusiastically promoted the good that women could and needed to do in AA battalions--so long as that good did not include loading, aiming, and firing the guns. Both conspirators later acknowledged there was no practical reason for the distinction, but they knew it was necessary or no one was going to accept their plan. It was a devious way to allow the pretense of obeying the taboo on women in combat roles.
In 1941, numbers merited putting the plan into action, and the first women of the ATS joined AA battalions in August. They served as spotters, forecasters, height calculators, and radio/radar operators. And, according to reports from their superior officers, they frequently did a better job than their male counterparts. Some of this might be PR--like the "munitionettes" of World War I, the women of the ATS AA battalion in World War II became vital and popular symbols of British strength and patriotism--and some of it might have been a propensity on the parts of some generals to see women as naturally lesser thus being surprised by their achievements. On the other hand, the nuanced nature of some of the praise points to the incredible work done by the average woman on the AA crews, even apart from the standout heroics of a few (very well publicized) individuals. Lieutenant Colonel J. W. Naylor, who hadn't wanted to serve on a mixed-gender battalion at all, enthusiastically "conceded:
Generally speaking they are slow starters, but once they get the main idea the progress is quite rapid. Height-takers are always good, and in my opinion are better than men. Predictor numbers after steady progress become really efficient. The spotters are fair...they seem to find difficult in the recognition of aircraft. This is quite understandable as women has never shown anything like the same amount of interest as men have in types of aircraft. They are picking it up very well, though, and--womenlike--once they have mastered anything of this sort, the thing sticks.
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