THIS week we have chosen photographs from the digital archives of Pontypool Museum celebrating the role of women and how they've shaped Torfaen over the years.

One of the images shows the workers of a munitions factory in Cwmbran during the First World War – all of whom are women.

While the men were away fighting on the front, the labour shortage allowed women to leave their traditional roles within the household as part of the Women’s Land Army.

Many thousands of women across the country worked in these factories, and were given the nicknames of ‘canary girls’.

The other image shows members of a branch of the Women’s Institute (WI) on an outing with a member of the clergy in 1920.

The WI, which was founded in 1897 in Canada, and its first meeting on British soil took place in Wales – in Llanfairpwll, Anglesey in 1915.

Since then, a number of WI branches have been established with Torfaen.

These images were donated by the Pontypool Museum as part of its digital archive, which aims to preserve historic documents, images and records from the area.

To find out more about the digital archive, contact the museum at pontypoolmuseum@hotmail.co.uk or call 01495 752036.

The Free Press thanks Pontypool Museum for allowing us to print the images.