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This paper examines the role of music in women's experience of factory work in the Second World War -an important topic but one largely overlooked in the existing literature. Two important forms of music flourished in war factories -the relaying of Music While You Work through loudspeakers, and the collective singing of workgroups. Drawing on a range of sources, the paper shows that music served to both express and create community in the workplace, and came to be seen as an anthropological necessity for survival in the context of exposure to repetitive and monotonous labour. The music also expressed a complex mix of simultaneous accommodation and resistance to women's position in munitions factory production. A key motif in women's musical cultures was autonomy, suggesting important continuities with the autonomous texture of other shopfloor cultures in Britain in the middle of the twentieth century. The widespread nature of women's singing also has important implications for how we understand the history of music in British workplaces.We sang a lot and we joked a lot -we were all together.(Aycliffe munitions factory worker)2You were working so many hours and everyone was living for the day. And I think we sang ourselves through that war -because in factories you sang.(Betty Lindsey, Southampton munitions worker)3There is a growing recognition of the potentially important ways in which music can influence people's experience of everyday life.4 Despite this, there is still a considerable gap in our knowledge of how music can have a role in people's experiences and social relations within the workplace.5 For instance, if we consider the field of labour history we find that that there have been some important contributions on music in cultures of the labour movement6 and on music in working-class cultures more generally.7

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The history of music in the workplace is a neglected area of study. This article explores the policies towards music in the paternalist Rowntree and Cadbury confectionery factories from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. We argue that the two firms were pioneering in their early use of music before becoming key players in the industrial welfare movement following the First World War. The broadcasting of music by Rowntree and Cadbury in the mid to late twentieth century is then placed in the context of a widespread adoption of tannoyed music in factories. We argue that music was employed as a means of easing the monotony of factory work whilst simultaneously aiming to improve productivity levels. However, as we demonstrate through oral history, women workers experienced music in ways not always in tune with management objectives.Song, Women, Gender, Quaker, Paternalism, Industrial Welfare, Industrial Psychology, Industrial Health,