In her new book, Bonnie White examines the formation and challenges of the first Women's Land Army (WLA) of Great Britain. Placing the invention of this important organization amid the wartime economic struggles of Britain, she argues that the call for women agriculturalists to take the place of men engaged in military service served as a solution to multiple social, economic, and gendered struggles of the early twentieth century. The formal appeal to women for work in agriculture was part of a broader educational scheme to address and challenge various middle-class constructs of gender and labor.

Building upon prewar agricultural training programs for women and various female horticultural associations, White demonstrates, WLA organizers and officials nonetheless missed opportunities to increase public communication and focus. This failure in messaging caused conflicts between the WLA organizers, the farmers, and the recruits, resulting in an organization that was more symbolic than efficient. Prejudices from farmers, male laborers, established farmwomen, and the government made it difficult for Land Girls, as those who worked for the WLA were commonly called, to be accepted in their new roles. Organizers and officials wasted time finding proper women to train and by insisting that only educated women be given the opportunity to serve. White argues that due to these challenges, the WLA placed only 7,000 workers in 1917 even though it received over 50,000 applicants.

White's study demonstrates that the real value of the WLA was that it had the potential to unsettle preexisting class structures and gender roles, even though in some ways it reinforced them. Though the history of the Land Girls often presents an image of a patriotic young girl who did her part to serve her nation or of a young socialite who found independence away from home, this story shows that Land Girls varied in their backgrounds, political perspectives, and successes. Some clearly had bad experiences. Whether influenced by local customs or broad ideologies, many women faced physical and cultural obstacles that led them to believe along with many male farmers that there was neither place nor space for women in paid agricultural labor.

A particular strength of White's well-researched and thoughtful work is an examination of the attempt to form a WLA of Scotland (SWLA). White notes that prewar social tensions combined with Scottish farming traditions left female laborers marginalized; the SWLA faced tough resistance, especially from farmers. Additionally, regional differences made recruiting in England and Wales very different from recruiting in Scotland, where some WLA organizers had to compete with the National Women's Service scheme for recruits. With limited money available and less local urgency to support the war effort through female agriculturalists, the SWLA faced little support and enormous struggle during its limited existence. Though White does not address the parallel American movement, the Scottish experience depicted here demonstrates challenges of regional differences much like those Americans faced with the formation of their first Women's Land Army in the final year of the war.

While the book's illustrations are quite limited, White's depth of detail on the wartime agricultural structure and economic status of agricultural labor leaves the reader with a wealth of contextual information. This is more than a women's history; it is an effective examination of economic and agricultural history of Britain on the brink of war. White effectively argues that while recent writing and film romanticizes the Land Girl experience as a short-lived adventure that concluded as the war ended, so, too, did the romantic ideals of the WLA conclude with the war's end. After the war, the WLA was demobilized, not in an act of punishment for lack of effectiveness, but because it was time (people said) to get back to the conditions of prewar life.

White demonstrates that although Britain disbanded the WLA and retired the uniform, the image of the Land Girl found a permanent place in national culture. Still, it belonged chiefly to the collective memory of women's war service rather than any concept of women's permanent place in the labor force. Though the intentions for decades were to find space for women in the agricultural sector as hired laborers, the war's end brought an end to that dream and instead brought a new era of examining that work as patriotic effort in a time of crisis rather than as a suitable occupation for women. In this way, the temporary wartime service of the Land Girls merely reinforced conventional gendered roles by promoting women's place in the home or in other traditional sites of labor. As the WLA disbanded, leaders like Meriel Talbot attempted to create the National Association of Landswomen to keep female agricultural labor in the minds of rural communities, but it, too, faded in time. The image of the Land Girl as strong, heroic, hardworking, and classless, however, lived on after demobilization in the literary texts and screenplays of the following century, even though it was somewhat idealistic and wrapped more in nostalgia than reality.