'Doing all that is possible': women state school teachers, girls and preferred contributions to Victoria's war effort, 1914-1918

During the Great War, `every facility was granted in clear terms to the male teachers and senior boys of Victoria s Education Department to vacate their classrooms for recruitment depots. Yet, female teachers and school girls had to negotiate a complex mix of requests and silences to determine what was possible and preferred. This article explores the enduring and changing priorities for women and girls that constituted what was possible, when, and why. It argues that both traditional gender roles and departmental war pragmatism confined the service of women and girls at that time.