Women and Food Production: Trinidad’s Response in World War II

Abstract

This article highlights mostly the work of the white upper, black, mixed and Indian middle-class women, through mostly an organization known as the Women’s Voluntary Services (WVS) in the colony’s “Grow More Food Campaign”. This was an official government programme re-enacted from World War I, and executed to ease the burdens of severe shortages, inflation and dependency in a time when food supplies globally were disrupted. The prominence and status of the women who became involved in the programme meant that their activities were highly publicized positively, which influenced the local population, garnering the support for a major government initiative in a time of turmoil. The newspapers of the time reveal that the government expressed public gratitude, but since then they have not been adequately recognized or discussed in published writings.