AT YOUR SERVICE - THE NATIONS GIRLHOOD AND THE CALL TO SERVICE IN ENGLAND, 1939-50

Service ideals were fundamental to constructions of femininity and gir lhood throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Amid the disruptio ns of the Second World War service remained key to expectations of Eng lish girlhood, although in this historical context it was public as op posed to private forms of service which were most vociferously promote d. On the one hand this was a resource issue. On the other, discourses on service served an explicitly cultural purpose in that they were ce ntral to the project of defining 'the nation' and the 'nation's' girlh ood. Key to this process was the continued and implicit differentiatio n of British youth initiatives from the mobilization of young people i n Germany and Italy. It is for this reason that attempts to understand the service expectations of English girlhood conveyed in youth policy and media representation need to be located in an international conte xt and, more specifically, the ideological construction on the domesti c front of 'other', and especially 'enemy',nations. But while discours es on girls' service constructed a specific national identity, they al so constituted class and gender-specific identities. From the basic el ements of training for service through to specific pre-service trainin g initiatives, the service of girls and boys was treated very differen tly. Wartime discourses on girls' service were mobilized in the constr uction of 'the nation' as well as the constitution and differentiation of the genders.