Noakes Lucy
School of Humanities, University of Brighton.
20 Century Br Hist. 2011;22(1):1-27. doi: 10.1093/tcbh/hwq031.
At the end of the First World War, the British government put into operation a Free Passage Scheme for ex-servicemen, ex-servicewomen and their dependants to emigrate to the colonies and dominions of the Empire. This scheme was driven by a complex network of interlinked beliefs and policies concerning both the relationship between the metropole and the Empire, and the perceived necessity for social stability in Britain and in the dominions and colonies. This article examines the Free Passage Scheme, paying particular attention to the ways in which it was envisaged as a means of restoring a gendered balance of the population in Britain, where young women outnumbered young men at the end of the war, and in the dominions, where men outnumbered women, and was also seen as a way of emigrating women whose wartime work experiences were understood to be in conflict with gendered identities in the post-war period. The article argues that the Free Passage Scheme needs to be understood as gendered, as it envisaged the transformation of female members of the auxiliary wartime services into domestic servants for the Dominions. The scheme's failure, it is argued, prefigures the failure of the far larger Empire Settlement Act of 1922 to emigrate large numbers of British women as domestic servants.
第一次世界大战结束时，英国政府实施了一项自由通行计划，允许退役军人、退役女军人及其家属移民到帝国的殖民地和自治领。该计划是由一系列相互关联的复杂信念和政策驱动的，这些信念和政策涉及宗主国与帝国之间的关系，以及英国、自治领和殖民地对社会稳定的认知需求。本文将审视自由通行计划，特别关注该计划被设想为恢复英国性别化人口平衡的一种方式，当时战争结束时英国年轻女性数量超过年轻男性，而在自治领男性数量超过女性，同时该计划也被视为一种将战时工作经历被认为与战后性别身份相冲突的女性移民出去的方式。本文认为，自由通行计划需要被理解为具有性别特征，因为它设想将战时辅助服务的女性成员转变为自治领的家庭佣人。有人认为，该计划的失败预示着1922年规模大得多的《帝国定居法案》未能将大量英国女性作为家庭佣人移民出去。
