Kate Adie's latest book explores the role of women in warfare. Women's Editor Christen Pears reports

Throughout history, the battlefield has been a male preserve but where women have appeared they have left a lasting impression. From Joan of Arc to Violette Szabo, a woman in uniform is perhaps the most potent symbol of a woman in a man's world.

During her long career as a BBC journalist, Kate Adie has had first-hand experience of the role women play in conflict and her new book, Corsets to Camouflage, uses contemporary correspondence and personal stories to bring to life the often unsung achievements of women in uniform.

Kate, who grew up in Sunderland and studied at Newcastle university, is the BBC's chief news correspondent. She was one of the first female reporters to send despatches from war zones around the world.

Born at the end of the Second World War, into a family with no military background, she had little idea of the role women played in warfare.

"I never guessed the extraordinary extent to which everyone had been 'in the wars' - especially the women. Maids who became munitions workers, schoolgirls on fire-watch, housewives who joined voluntary units, and all those who joined the services," she says.

"Military history is a male preserve, dominated by the image of the male warrior. Nevertheless, the unprecedented progress of women towards equality during the 20th century is brought into sharp relief by war, although that progress often went unnoticed, and unsung, behind the striking deeds of valour on the battlefield."

From munitions workers to F-18 fighter pilots, women have been treated with varying degrees of respect and suspicion but have now earned the right to be considered for the front line. Although it touches on celebrated figures such as Joan of Arc, the book focuses on the roles women have played during the major conflicts of the 20th century.

Ambulance drivers, munitions workers, nurses and even soldiers are included, like Sergeant Major Flora Sandes, from Poppleton near York, the only British woman officially enrolled as a soldier during the First World War. She was serving as a nurse in Serbia when she drifted into the 2nd Infantry Regiment as a private. She fought in combat, was wounded several times and rose through the ranks to become a sergeant major and later a captain.

In Sunderland, ten lady conductors were employed on the trams. They may not have been the uniformed services but they were in uniform, doing their bit for the war effort.

Corsets and Camouflage is filled with stories like theirs, stories about ordinary women who responded to extraordinary circumstances and took their places in what was traditionally seen as a man's world. The book ties in with Women and War, a major exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, which will open on October 15.

It will include uniforms, paintings, posters, photographs, film and personal memorabilia from major international museums.

Among the exhibits will be a diary kept by nurse Edith Cavell, Amy Johnson's flying tunic and Marlene Dietrich's Second World War Uniform.

l Corsets and Camouflage: Women and War by Kate Adie (Hodder and Stoughton, £20)