The National Selective Service (NSS) program to mobilize and allocate manpower for the Canadian war effort was established in March 1942. In May, the Women's Division was created to deal with employment of women and related concerns, and Fraudena Eaton of Vancouver, a woman with considerable experience in community work and on the British Columbia Board of Industrial Relations, was appointed to head it. Although a general national registration had been carried out in 1940, the NSS ordered a special registration of women in Canada aged twenty through twenty-four in September 1942. In urban areas, women reported to the local Employment and Selective Service Office; in rural areas, to the nearest post office. The objective of this "new inventory of Canada's womanpower" was to get an up-to-date estimate of the size of the "reservoir" of young female workers available to meet the increasing labour shortages in essential war industries.
While the registration was mandatory, women's labour was not conscripted for the war effort in Canada. The local offices of the National Employment Service across Canada were used by the NSS for the recruitment and placement of volunteers. Separate Women's Division were set up in all the larger urban centres, and women either appeared in person to apply for a permit to seek employment or, if they lived in the country, wrote to the nearest office. Here we see female applicants at NSS offices in Moncton, New Brunswick, June 1944.
Courtesy: National Film Board Second World War Still Photograph Collection, National Photography Collection, Public Archives of Canada (PA-116921)
