The British Government's Construction of Female Identity: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Gender and Foreign Status in the Second World War

Advisors: Anders Stephanson (Columbia), Jonathan Barnes (LSE)

In September 1939, the British Home Office (HO) faced questions of whom in Britain posed no danger to the British war effort. As such, the HO embarked on the sorting and internment of British and foreign nationals considered suspect. Women too were discussed, including foreign women and British-born women married to foreign nationals, and thus, by law, considered foreigners themselves. In the HO’s long paper trail recording its discussions on foreign women and British-born women, the HO revealed the view that women were not to be trusted during war and could pose a great risk in times of conflict due to their devious nature or foreign marital relationships. The HO’s formation of a female identity in war was reached via many different avenues of reasoning that intersected with class and education, as well as notions of race, stemming from a British imperial worldview and the steady influence of a fascist Europe