Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 2 (2021), pp. 255–273

Marketed as a continuation of the recently demobilized Women’s Land Army (WLA), the National Association of Landswomen (NAL) sought to capitalize on its relation to the better-known wartime organization to bolster recruitment, but in doing so it failed to establish its own identity. As a peacetime organization, its mandate overlapped with both the Women’s Farm and Garden Union and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, forcing it to compete for members with two established organizations that had the infrastructure in place to attend to the needs of rural women. In spite of these difficulties, however, the NAL did achieve a number of key objectives: it helped to establish a health insurance scheme for women agricultural workers, fought for standardized wages for women in the industry, and provided monetary support for women’s agricultural and horticultural education and for the purchase of smallholdings in an effort to keep women on the land. 

Complete Volume PDF