Mobilisation on the Australian ‘home front’ during the Second World War enabled some women to move temporarily into employment usually reserved for men, and to earn significantly higher wages than they were accustomed to, but the benefits of this have been often overstated. Focusing on South Australian women in the city and rural areas who took up the new working opportunities — in munitions factories and the Australian Women’s Land Army in particular — this article demonstrates that relatively few women were entitled to higher wages, such wages were lower and paid later in South Australia than in other states, and that working conditions were unattractive and often dangerous. At the war’s end, the social imperative to marry and raise children, coupled with demands that they give up their place for male workers, then saw many women return to domesticity or less-rewarded and lower status ‘female occupations’.

第二次世界大战期间，在澳大利亚“家庭阵线”上的动员使一些妇女能够临时从事通常由男子担任的工作，并获得比她们通常所习惯的更高的工资，但是这样做的好处常常被夸大了。本文着眼于在弹药工厂，特别是在澳大利亚妇女土地军中，在城市和农村地区获得新工作机会的南澳大利亚妇女，该文章表明，有权获得较高工资的妇女相对较少，这种工资较低且得到了报酬。在南澳大利亚比其他州晚，而且工作条件没有吸引力，而且通常很危险。战争结束时，结婚和抚养子女的社会需求，加上要求他们放弃男性工人的职位，