Women only received the right to vote after the First World War. In Britain it came in 1918. In the United States it occurred in 1920.The pressures of war resulted in many places off the battlefield becoming sites where women could contribute to the war effort. Camouflage was one such field. The Royal Navy established a central ship camouflage authority in 1917. It was located at Burlington House, the site of the Royal Academy of Arts. Female students were recruited to color the designs for ship camouflage prepared by Wilkinson and his associates. The colors on the drawings they produced often were very different from those the designers intended. This resulted in the preparation of a standardized rubber stamp noting “Colors on plan are for the purposes of measurement only. Actual colors as per color chart “. On American plans, the identification of the plan, the color chart, and the standard warning were all incorporated into a single frame that was usually placed on the upper right corner of the plan. This picture show women painting a fake battleship that was erected to promote recruitment in the US Navy
The US Congress passed the Naval Act of 1916 before America entered the fray. When hostilities commenced, women were still prohibited from joining the Navy and other Regular armed services. But the act’s vague language relating to the reserve forces did not prohibit accepting women. The act allowed recruiting “all persons who may be capable of performing special useful service for coastal defense.” This was the loophole that allowed women to enlist. On March 19, 1917, the Bureau of Navigation sent letters to the commanders of the naval districts informing them they could recruit women into the Naval Coast Defense Reserve to be “utilized as radio operators, stenographers, nurses, messengers, chauffeurs, etc. and in many other capacities in the industrial line.” The new enlisted women were able to become yeomen, electricians (radio operators), or any other ratings necessary to the naval district operations. Most became yeomen and received the designation yeomen (F) for female yeomen. The following photographs show women working on the preparation of models for use in testing new camouflage designs.
Wetherhorn 