The Role of Women in the Secret Operations Executive of WW2

20 June 2023

By Shona McArthur, Year 13, King Edwards VII, Sheffield

Women’s organisations were a key way in which British women helped the Allied effort in World War Two and took part in a defining period of world history. In this article, I determine the significance of women's role in the Special Operations Executive, or the SOE (the British group for spying in occupied Europe), using historian Christine Counsell’s 5 Rs: Revealing, Resonant, Remarkable, Remembered and Results. 

Before evaluating the organisation, it’s important to highlight the reoccurring issue of sexism, caused by the societal prejudices of the time.

There's quite a lot of research which tries to explain why women were so particularly restricted compared to their male counterparts. The most convincing suggestion I have found is Tessa Dunlop’s ‘Helix effect’. She explains that war is a masculine construct, so with each step upwards women made, the job they took on lost its masculinity and therefore men wouldn’t want to do it. To keep it so that there was any incentive at all to fight, women had to be held back. There seemed to be a fear that proving women didn’t need to maintain their femininity might challenge the entire structure of post-war society. 

While this aspect of my research may be disheartening to uncover for a current reader, our much more inclusive society today makes it easier to overlook how far we have had to come. It gives insight into the contemporary perspective, therefore becoming historically significant. Re-evaluating the work of SOE women is increasingly important so that we can shed light on and acknowledge their significant role in WW2. 

Female involvement in the SOE meant that it became one of the most significant organisations of the time. The SOE allowed women to act on the front line and forced the British government to reconsider the value of women to their war campaign. The very small size and restricted accessibility of the organisation does limit its societal resonance. 

The SOE is highly remarkable thanks to the front line role it gave women in the Allied fight against Axis powers. The role of women was crucial because ‘they didn’t look so much for women as men of course...As a girl you could do a lot more.’ It is estimated that 300 women were employed by the SOE, with 39 being successfully trained and sent to Nazi Occupied France. They had duties like being wireless operators, couriers, organising acts of sabotage on the German occupiers and training up French resistance groups in the use of various weapons. This makes the women’s contribution highly significant as it placed them deep within the internal destruction of the Nazi regime. Operations ahead of the D-Day landings were so successfully completed that a normally two-day journey from southern to northern France would take a German soldier two weeks to complete. 

The contribution they made was also resonant because of the danger and restrictions the women met along the way. Jobs had to be completed carefully and without detection, requiring dedication and bravery from the women. The life expectancy of a wireless operator was only six weeks, and 25% of SOE women were killed in action. This makes their losses to the war effort some of the most significant of all the organisations British women could join at this time, because it had the highest fatality rate of any group. 

The SOE can also be considered significant because it united multiple women’s organisations within one institution. Members of the WAAFs (Women’s RAF branch), the ATS (Women’s Army Branch) and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry were all recruited due to their existing training for coding and wireless operation. Alongside this, many women from the public were chosen to receive training, often due to their experience living in France or even helping people escape occupied Europe - like in the case of Nancy Wake. This was remarkable because women with a range of experiences and skills were able to contribute to the allied forces within the SOE. 

The significance of the SOE women’s contribution can also be seen in how they have been remembered and celebrated. SOE women are some of the most well-recognised women of the Second World War, many of them having had films and books made biographing their experiences in occupied France. They have also earned the most military decorations of any of the women’s organisations. SOE women hold medals from Britain, France and America. This suggests a great significance in the contributions of the women in the SOE because their war work is publicly and militarily remembered in Britain and abroad. 

SOE women made their most significant contribution through changing governmental opinions of women’s capabilities because they showed British leaders that not only could women do the same jobs as men, but their smaller chances of detection actually resulted in them being a more valuable resource to the British secret service. The organisation’s contribution was given extra significance by the remarkable involvement they had in the front-line operations, such as D-Day, and the high levels of danger women put themselves in to ’set Europe ablaze’. 

Furthermore, it can be considered of greater significance than most women's organisations because it united multiple organisations and focused on the skills rather than quantity of the workforce, with theresult of being the closest any British women could get to direct war with the Axis powers. However, it can also be argued that, due to the specific skill set required, the organisation’s significance was limited. There were restrictions on who was able to contribute, and so although the result of action was significant, the organisation’s small size and covertness stopped it from having greater resonance with the public of the time than more accessible and recognisable women’s groups, such as the Land Army.

To conclude, WW2 gave many British women the chance to demonstrate their value in the otherwise masculine construct of war and patriarchal society. Involvement in organisations like the SOE gave a glimpse at what the world could look like for the modern woman. The Second World War was important for British society because the shared goal of ending the war facilitated an, although maybe only momentary, upheaval of the rigid structure and revealed that women and minority groups were as valuable a workforce as anyone else in the country.