THE changing role of women during the First World War is the subject of three commemorative films to be shown this week at a Worcester church.

The films will be screened at St Helen's Church, High Street, Worcester, between noon and 2pm this Friday (September 28).

Each film is around 10 to 12 minutes long. All three will be shown between noon and 1pm and repeated between 1pm and 2pm.

The films have been released by the Imperial War Museum and are called “Deeds not Words: The Suffragette Surgeons of WW1”, “Nurses in WW1”

and “The War Women of England: Land Workers".

The showings have been organised by Worcester Civic Society with St Helen’s Church.

A spokesperson for the civic society said: "Prior to 1914, the role of women was typically confined to homemaking and raising children.

"The suffragette movement was growing in strength and numbers, but it was the outbreak of war on August 4, 1914 and the four years of bloodshed that followed, that dramatically changed the lives of thousands of women.

"The huge numbers of men serving in the armed forces meant there was a desperate shortage of manpower in many jobs that had once been the sole domain of male employees.

"With the ever-growing casualty lists, women rose to the challenge of covering jobs where, in many instances, the previous employee would never return."

Most people today are aware of women working as nurses or ‘munitionettes’ during the war but the range of jobs taken up by women extended far wider including farming, railways, the civil service and in shops and post offices.

Female doctors and surgeons such as Louisa Garrett Anderson, Flora Murray and Elsie Inglis were able to set up military hospitals overseas and use their skills to treat thousands of casualties.

The first ever woman police constable, Mrs Edith Smith, with the powers of arrest was sworn in during December 1915 in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

Volunteer guides will also be available to show visitors around the church.

Admission is free. Refreshments will be available for a donation.

For further information please contact: stella@allsaintsworcester.org.uk