Women's work, experiences, and status during wartime have received sustained attention from professional historians for over thirty years. An early emphasis on making visible women's vital contributions to the war effort, both official and voluntary, led to a consideration of whether women gained equality through these new opportunities. Did the presence of “Rosie the Riveter” lead to profound change in women's lives? Conversely, often emphasizing women's maternal qualities, women's opposition to war and their attempts to bring about peace were an ongoing theme. Thanks to the work of many historians and feminist scholars across disciplines and around the Anglo-British world, such as Cynthia Enloe, Deborah Montgomerie, Penny Summerfield, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Angela Woollacott, by the mid-1990s the history of women and war reached the stage where a strong international body of work existed.

Tammy M. Proctor's key strength is her broad awareness of the secondary literature. She is up-to-date and incorporates recent work by Joanna Bourke, Margaret Darrow, and Susan Grayzel. Female Intelligence is a broad and exploratory book that relies heavily upon secondary literature to make and secure its arguments. It represents a departure from the traditional historical monograph in which central insights came from narrowly defined primary sources located in archives. Proctor repeats arguments and uses historical material drawn from the secondary scholarship of the late 1990s. In a scholarly book such as this, to acknowledge ideas and information adequately requires precision. Proctor's approach appears uneven. Sometimes, scholars are referred to in the text, sometimes their work is drawn upon and a footnote is inserted. Sometimes ideas are drawn upon, but few footnotes appear, resulting in a lack of acknowledgment and the false impression of a new argument. For example, it passes without reference that Edith Cavell's life and work, the reaction to and propaganda surrounding her death, her contribution to British conscription, constructions of her as a young innocent British martyr, and images of her death were all discussed in my 1997 History Now article “Edith Cavell—Heroine: No Hatred or Bitterness for Anyone?”

So what is new about this book? Female Intelligence turns to a subject much written about for popular audiences but, until now, rarely examined by women's historians: that of women and espionage. Proctor seeks to take the mythical female “vamp” out of her topic to contrast image with reality. To do this she reveals women's everyday roles as intelligence officers, field agents, clerical workers, and supervisors. Interestingly, as Proctor reveals, lady traveler Gertrude Bell was the first woman employed by British Intelligence as a political officer.

In seeking forgotten female intelligence workers Proctor's approach is general and eclectic. The selection process for inclusion is broad, and the book becomes a series of interesting, if problematically connected, case studies. Proctor's subjects are mainly British, but sometimes European. Female Intelligence moves beyond Britain to examine women spies for Britain behind the enemy lines, such as those who were a part of La Dame Blanche, a British intelligence network operated by the British War Office. Resistance workers and professionals working for the enemy are included.

The book hinges on the women's part in the expansion and modernization of British intelligence during World War I, which alone is a large area to examine. Proctor estimates that more than six thousand women served in civil and military occupations as members of the British intelligence community. It was through her earlier work on the British Girl Guide movement that Proctor became interested in girls being used as messengers for the MI5. Female Intelligence reveals that the MI5 employed large numbers of women who were paid less than their male colleagues and often performed hours of detailed and monotonous work with few holidays.

Female Intelligence also explores Britain's Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA) and the approximately two hundred women captured or charged for spying in Britain. There are case studies, but as might be expected in writing history about those who intended to remain anonymous, the details have been difficult to piece together. Proctor argues that most of the women tried in Britain for espionage were foreign-born, and representative of national anxieties that accompanied war. Proctor is interested in how government officials defined espionage as an internal threat that was tied to sexual perversion and moral corruption—both problems that were attributed to women.

Throughout Female Intelligence, building upon the secondary literature, Proctor offers a gendered analysis of women and espionage. She argues that espionage was gendered feminine, and bad, and that women disguised their cleverness and used their sexuality to gain knowledge. While women's sexuality made men vulnerable, women were treated in different and often inferior ways.

Despite claiming that she is not interested in “great” women in espionage, but in the “quiet” women, chapters 5 and 6 of Female Intelligence include Mata Hari, Cavell, and Gabrielle Petit. Particularly undigested and tangential is the inclusion of Cavell, an English nurse executed by the Germans on 12 October 1915, on the charge of “escorting troops to the enemy.” In a chapter titled “Spies Who Knew How to Die,” while acknowledging that Cavell was not a spy, Proctor labels Cavell a “spy-martyr.”

Female Intelligence is enjoyable and interesting because of its broad scope in bringing together previously separate historical subjects, its making visible women's part in espionage, and its feminist rereading of World War I images of women spies. It shows how far the history of women and war has come. Yet it reveals the dangers of a monograph that skates across so many women subjects and, in doing so, draws so extensively from the secondary literature. The result is that while the subject matter is alluring, detail often gives way to an eclectic approach, and some arguments and findings are overgeneralized and unsecured. The book is strongest on women in the MI5 and the La Dame Blanche, where personal accounts and letters, official documents, and newspaper reports have been drawn upon.

If Female Intelligence has sketched out the history of women and espionage during World War I, further developments need to return to detail and precision. Gender analysis needs to be thoughtful and careful not to overgeneralize. Secondary sources need to be carefully acknowledged, and British-centered approaches need a robust research design.