The war leading States’ Call for Women’s help – comparing posters on both sides of the (home) frontduring World War II (EN – CUR – 791)

This learning scenario is based on several British and German propaganda posters calling women to duty in the Second World War and which are available on Europeana’s website. The students will analyse the posters’ picture language to recognise similarities in the representation of how women were called to duty in Second World War. They will realise that there were stereotypical jobs meant for women like taking care of ill soldiers, but also calls for the women’s contribution in industrial fields, stereotypically seen as typical male jobs in pre-war time. Thus, they realize the impact of a total war for a democratic society, but they do also realize that the call for women’s contribution was done with similar graphical means in a cruel dictatorship.

Author: Jochen Krenz

Age of students: 15-17

Subject and topic: History

This learning scenario has been developed during the “ Digital Education with Cultural heritage 2023″ online course. The course aimed to improve teachers’ understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate it into their lessons and practices. The course can be accessed here.

Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:

Public Domain Mark 1.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.