The Role of Women in the SADF gallery has been curated to show how the careful and specific visual messaging both encourages women to enlist in the SADF, to show their support for the efforts of the men at the Border and to fulfil their duty as a loyal South African. These roles for women were aimed to allow for the women’s service in the military, however this did not include women’s involvement in direct combat activities. Roles for women were represented as mainly clerical and providing administrative or technical support, which were portrayed as roles that would preserve the femininity of women in the military context.
Femininity was represented in the responsibilities of women’s maintenance and nurturing of the home front. These images and articles were predominantly contained in the “Vroueblad” supplement within Paratus which had been directed to women readers both in terms of stylistic composition and content.
