On 12 and 13 September 2013, the conference Lessons of War: Gender and the Second World War was held at Lancaster University, at the invitation of Corinna Peniston-Bird (Lancaster University) and Emma Vickers (Liverpool John Moores University). With the generous sponsorship of the Economic History Society and the Royal Historical Association, and the support of the Department of History, forty-two delegates from all over the world came together to discuss the complexities of gender history and the Second World War, and the contribution gender studies makes to overall understandings of that conflict.