At your service: "The nation's" girlhood and the call to service in England, 1939-50.

Service ideals were fundamental to the constructions of femininity and girlhood throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Amid the disruptions of the Second World War, service remained key to expectations of English girlhood, although, in this historical context, it was public as opposed to private forms of service that were most vociferously promoted. On the one hand, this was a resource issue. On the other, discourses on service served an explicitly cultural purpose in that they were central to the project of defining "the nation" and the "nation's" girlhood. Key to this process was the continued and implicit differentiation of British youth initiatives from the mobilization of young people in 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 context and, more specifically, the ideological construction on the domestic front of "other," and especially "enemy," nations. Wartime discourses on girls' service were mobilized in the construction of "the nation," as well as in the constitution and differentiation of the genders.