Women in Bletchley Park

About 7,500 women worked in Bletchley Park, the central site for British cryptanalysts during World War II. Women constituted roughly 75% of the workforce there. While women were overwhelmingly under-represented in high-level work such as cryptanalysis, they were employed in large numbers in other important areas, including as operators of cryptographic and communications machinery, translators of Axis documents, traffic analysts, clerical workers, and more. Most of the female workforce were enlisted in the Women's Royal Naval Service, WRNS, nicknamed the Wrens.

The Wrens performed a vital role operating the computers used for code-breaking, including the Colossus and Bombe machines. Working around the clock in three eight-hour shifts, they were the beating heart of Bletchley Park.

Women were also involved in the construction of the machines, including doing the wiring and soldering to create each Colossus computer.

In January 1945, at the peak of codebreaking efforts, nearly 10,000 personnel were working at Bletchley and its outstations. About three-quarters of these were women.