The Home Guard, like the regular armed forces, had a complex attitude to gender. On the one hand many women were keen to volunteer, and all the services had considerable personnel requirements; on the other there was deep-seated conservatism. Shortly before the war the army Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) were created/reinstituted with the understanding that women would serve in non-combatant roles; they were not (usually) trained to use or issued with weapons. The distinction became increasingly blurred as their role expanded; WAAF armourers could service and load aircraft weapons, but if German paratroops landed at RAF Detling in 1940 the WAAF clerks only had a rack of hockey sticks to defend themselves with (though that was probably as much to do with a general shortage of small arms as a matter of policy). ATS anti-aircraft crews could track targets, direct and load the guns, but (technically) they did not fire them.

Against such a backdrop the call for Local Defence Volunteers was made specifically to men. There were those who pushed for women to serve as full members, most prominently Edith Summerskill, MP for Fulham West, who vigorously advocated in parliament: "I want to make it clear that I am not asking for women to be included solely as cooks and clerks in the Home Guard but in the same capacity as men, with equal rights and no privileges." The authorities were unmoved; the Director General of the Home Guard wrote in a 1940 memo "Under no circumstances should women be enrolled in the Home Guard".

Some women did unofficially work with Home Guard units, often in administrative roles; others took more direct action founding groups such as the Amazon Defence Corps, and Summerskill started a Women's Home Defence Force in 1941 including weapons training (see Amazons against the Nazis: Women’s Home Defence in Wartime Britain from Steven Woodbridge of Kingston University). Technically such groups were illegal, but not prosecuted due to concerns over the public reaction to such a move. Eventually, grudgingly, a Women's Home Guard Auxiliary was set up in 1943. As in the regular forces there was to be no weapons training, its members were to fulfil non-combatant roles, they received no uniforms but got a plastic badge. (Penny Summerfield & Corinna Peniston-Bird, "Women in the Firing Line: the Home Guard and the Defence of Gender Boundaries in Britain in the Second World War", Women's History Review vol. 9 no. 2).

There might be more mileage, story-wise, in the unofficial organisations; there's a Guardian article that mentions: "Lady Helena Gleichen, a grand-niece of Queen Victoria, set up her own private army to protect her stately home near Much Marcle in Herefordshire. [...] She demanded that the Shropshire Light Infantry give her 80 rifles with ammunition, adding, "I could do with some machine guns, too, if you have any to spare." When her request was denied she resorted to her own collection of antique weapons."

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