For Case Studies one can divide the topic into two broad

divsions; India and the rest of the world.

In India, the Rani Laxmi Bai Regiment of Subash
Chandra Bose’s INA can be taken into account.
On a global scale, the contribution of Maria Bochkareva
can be included.
Women in the World Wars

David McLellan - Interior of a ward on a British Ambulance Train in France during World
War I

In Great Britain just before World War I there were 24 million adult women and
1.7 million worked in domestic service, 800,000 worked in the textile
manufacturing industry, 600,000 worked in the clothing trades, 500,000 worked
in commerce, and 260,000 worked in local and national government, including
teaching.[1] The British textile and clothing trades, in particular, employed far more
women than men and were regarded as 'women's work'.[1] During WWII, in total,
6 million women were added to the workforce in what resulted as a major cultural
shift. With the men fighting in the wars, women were needed to take on
responsibilities that the men had to leave behind. [2]
While some women managed to enter the traditionally male career paths,
 women, for the most part, were expected to be primarily involved in "duties at
home" and "women's work". Before 1914, only a few countries, including New
Zealand, Australia, and several Scandinavian nations, had given women the right to vote
(see Women's suffrage), but otherwise, women were minimally involved in the political process.
The two world wars hinged as much on industrial production as they did on battlefield clashes. With
millions of men away fighting and with the inevitable casualties, there was a severe shortage of
labour in a range of industries, from rural and farm work to urban office jobs.
During both world wars women were needed by the national war effort to undertake new roles.[1] In
Great Britain, this was known as a process of "Dilution" and was strongly contested by the trade
unions, particularly in the engineering and ship building industries.[1] For the duration of both World
Wars, women sometimes did take on skilled "men's work".[1] However, in accordance with the
agreement negotiated with the trade unions, women undertaking jobs covered by the Dilution
agreement lost their jobs at the end of the First World War.[1]

World War I[edit]

Main article: Women in World War I

The United States Navy began accepting women for enlisted serviceduring World War I

Home front[edit]
By 1914 nearly 5.09 million out of the 23.8 million women in Britain were working. Thousands
worked in munitions factories (see Canary girl), offices and large hangars used to build
aircraft.[1] Women were also involved in knitting socks for the soldiers on the front, as well as other
voluntary work, but as a matter of survival women had to work for paid employment for the sake of
their families. Many women worked as volunteers serving at the Red Cross, encouraged the sale
of war bonds or planted "victory gardens".
Not only did women have to keep "the home fires burning" but they took on voluntary and paid
employment that was diverse in scope and showed that women were capable in diverse fields of
endeavour. There is little doubt this expanded the view of the role of women in society and changed
the outlook of what women could do and their place in the workforce. Although women were still paid
less than men in the workforce, pay inequalities were starting to diminish as women were now
getting paid two-thirds of the typical pay for men, a 28% increase. However, the extent of this
change is open to historical debate. In part because of female participation in the war effort Canada,
the United States, Great Britain, and a number of European countries extended suffrage to women
in the years after the First World War.
British historians[why?] no longer emphasize the granting of woman suffrage as a reward for women's
participation in war work. Pugh (1974) argues that enfranchising soldiers primarily and women
secondarily was decided by senior politicians in 1916. In the absence of major women's groups
demanding equal suffrage, the government's conference recommended limited, age-restricted
women's suffrage. The suffragettes had been weakened, Pugh argues, by repeated failures before
1914 and by the disorganizing effects of war mobilization; therefore they quietly accepted these
restrictions, which were approved in 1918 by a majority of the War Ministry and each political party in
Parliament.[3] More generally, G. R. Searle (2004) argues that the British debate was essentially over
by the 1890s, and that granting the suffrage in 1918 was mostly a byproduct of giving the vote to
male soldiers. Women in Britain finally achieved suffrage on the same terms as men in 1928.[4]
Military service[edit]
Nursing became almost the only area of female contribution that involved being at the front and
experiencing the war. In Britain the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, First Aid Nursing
Yeomanry and Voluntary Aid Detachment were all started before World War I. The VADs were not
allowed in the front line until 1915[5].
More than 12,000 women enlisted in auxiliary roles in the United States Navy and Marine Corps
during the First World War. About 400 of them died in that war.[6]
Over 2,800 women served with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War
and it was during that era that the role of Canadian women in the military first extended beyond
nursing.[7]Women were given paramilitary training in small arms, drill, first aid and vehicle
maintenance in case they were needed as home guards.[7] Forty-three women in the Canadian
military died during WWI.[7]
The only belligerent to deploy female combat troops in substantial numbers was the Russian
Provisional Government in 1917. Its few "Women's Battalions" fought well, but failed to provide the
propaganda value expected of them and were disbanded before the end of the year. In the
later Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks would also employ women infantry.[8]
In the 1918 Finnish Civil War, more than 2,000 women fought in the paramilitary Women's Red
Guards.[9]

World War II[edit]

Main article: Women in World War II

In many nations women were encouraged to join female branches of the armed forces or participate in
industrial or farm work.

United States[edit]
Women in World War II took on a variety of roles from country to country. World War II involved
global conflict on an unprecedented scale; the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population
made the expansion of the role of women inevitable. The hard skilled labor of women was
symbolized in the United States by the concept of Rosie the Riveter, a woman factory laborer
performing what was previously considered man's work.
With this expanded horizon of opportunity and confidence, and with the extended skill base that
many women could now give to paid and voluntary employment, women's roles in World War II were
even more extensive than in the First World War. By 1945, more than 2.2 million women were
working in war industries, especially in munitions plants. They participated in the building of ships,
aircraft, vehicles, and weaponry. Women also worked on farms, drove trucks, provided logistic
support for soldiers and entered professional areas of work that were previously the preserve of
men. In the Allied countries thousands of women enlisted as nurses serving in the front line units.
Thousands of others joined defensive militias at home and there was a great increase in the number
of women serving for the military itself, particularly in the Soviet Union's Red Army.
During World War II, approximately 400,000 U.S. women served in support positions with the armed
forces and more than 460 — some sources say the figure is closer to 543 — lost their lives as a
result of the war, including 16 from enemy fire. Women became officially recognized as a permanent
part of the U.S. armed forces after the war with the passing of the Women's Armed Services
Integration Act of 1948.
The ability for women to be involved overseas opened doors for many underrepresented groups,
including Latinas, to serve their country.
Out of one million African Americans serving in WWII, 600,000 of them were women. 4,000 of these
women served in the Women's Army Corps and 330 of these women served as nurses. African
American women also fought for African American rights through media, social activism, etc. A
person's race was heavily divided and in the year 1943, there were a documented 242 violent events
against African Americans regardless of whether they served in the war efforts or not.[10]
Europe[edit]
Several hundred thousand women in countries such as England, Soviet Union, served in combat
roles, especially in anti-aircraft units. The U.S. decided not to use women in combat because public
opinion would not tolerate it.
Germany had presented an ideal female role at home, but the urgent need for war production led to
the hiring of millions of German women for factory and office work.[11]
Many women served in the resistances of Yugoslavia, Poland, France, and Italy, and in the
British SOE and American OSS which aided these.
Approximately 2 million Jewish women in the Holocaust were killed, and the Nazis also killed other
women who belonged to groups they were committing genocide against, such as women with
disabilities and Roma women.
Asia and Pacific[edit]
Women, called comfort women, were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army
before and during World War II. Korean women were especially used.[12]
But a far greater number of women worked in war industry than in sex slavery. Women in Japan and
Korea also performed industrial labor duties during the war. They helped make bombs and guns and
airplanes, etc.
Australia[edit]
Main article: Australian women during World War II
Australian women during World War II played a larger role than they had during The First World
War, when they primarily served as nurses and additional homefront workers. Many women wanted
to play an active role in the war, and hundreds of voluntary women's auxiliary and paramilitary
organisations had been formed by 1940. A shortage of male recruits forced the military to establish
female branches in 1941 and 1942. Women entered roles which had traditionally been limited to
men, but continued to receive lower wages.[13]
Canada[edit]
Main article: Canadian women in the World Wars
Canadian women in the World Wars became indispensable because the World Wars were total
wars that required the maximum effort of the civilian population. While Canadians were deeply
divided on the issue of conscription for men, there was wide agreement that women had important
new roles to play in the home, in civic life, in industry, in nursing, and even in military uniforms.
Historians debate whether there was much long-term impact on the postwar roles of women.[14]

show

World War I

show

World War II

show

Women in Africa

show

Women in Asia

show
 Women in North America

show

Women in South America

show

Women in Oceania

Striking Women
Women and work
World War I: 1914-1918
Women, wages and rights

Women's work in WW1

During WWI (1914-1918), large numbers of women were recruited into jobs vacated by
men who had gone to fight in the war. New jobs were also created as part of the war effort,
for example in munitions factories. The high demand for weapons resulted in the
munitions factories becoming the largest single employer of women during 1918. Though
there was initial resistance to hiring women for what was seen as ‘men’s work’, the
introduction of conscription in 1916 made the need for women workers urgent. Around
this time, the government began coordinating the employment of women through
campaigns and recruitment drives.
Examine
This led to women working in areas of work that were formerly reserved for men, for
example as railway guards and ticket collectors, buses and tram conductors, postal
workers, police, firefighters and as bank ‘tellers’ and clerks. Some women also worked
heavy or precision machinery in engineering, led cart horses on farms, and worked in
the civil service and factories. However, they received lower wages for doing the same
work, and thus began some of the earliest demands for equal pay.

By 1917 munitions factories, which primarily employed women workers, produced 80% of
the weapons and shells used by the British Army (Airth-Kindree, 1987). Known as
‘canaries’ because they had to handle TNT (the chemical compound trinitrotoluene that is
used as an explosive agent in munitions) which caused their skin to turn yellow, these
women risked their lives working with poisonous substances without adequate protective
clothing or the required safety measures. Around 400 women died from overexposure to
TNT during WWI.

Discuss
Women, wages and rights

Women munition workers sorting shells during the First World War
Credit:

TUC Collections, London Metropolitan University

Women’s employment rates increased during WWI, from 23.6% of the working age
population in 1914 to between 37.7% and 46.7% in 1918 (Braybon 1989, p.49). It is
difficult to get exact estimates because domestic workers were excluded from these
figures and many women moved from domestic service into the jobs created due to the
war effort. The employment of married women increased sharply – accounting for nearly
40% of all women workers by 1918 (Braybon, 1989: p. 49).

But because women were paid less than men, there was a worry that employers would
continue to employ women in these jobs even when the men returned from the war. This
did not happen; either the women were sacked to make way for the returning soldiers or
women remained working alongside men but at lower wage rates. But even before the end
of the war, many women refused to accept lower pay for what in most cases was the same
work as had been done previously by men. The women workers on London buses and
trams went on strike in 1918 to demand the same increase in pay (war bonus) as men. The
strike spread to other towns in the South East and to the London Underground. This was
the first equal pay strike in the UK which was initiated, led and ultimately won by women.

Following women’s demands for equal pay, a Committee was set up by the War Cabinet in
1917 to examine the question of women’s wages and released its final report after the war
ended (Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, Cmd 135, 1919, p.2).

This report endorsed the principle of 'equal pay for equal work'. But their expectation was
that due to their ‘lesser strength and special health problems’, women's 'output' would not
be equal to that of men. Despite evidence that women had taken on what were considered
men's jobs and performed them effectively during the war, this did not shift popular (and
government) perception that women would be less productive than men. The unions
received guarantees that where women had fully replaced skilled men they would be paid
the same as the men - ie would receive equal pay. But it was made clear that these
changes were for the duration of the war only and would be reversed when the war ended
and the soldiers came back.

Compare
 The women conductors of the Metropolitan Electric Tramways Company pose for a studio portrait in 1917-18
Credit:

TUC Collections, London Metropolitan University

After undertaking the activities within this section students will be able to:

1. Describe the roles women played in the workplace during WWI.

2. Explain the reasons why women's participation in the workplace increased during WWI.
3. Evaluate the differences in wages between men and women and the consequences of this
inequality on women's living standards.
4. Analyse the short and long term consequences of the increased participation of women in
the workplace during WWI.
 View the full image

This letter dated 10 January 1918 confirms that women working as conductors, inspectors on
trams and buses have the same working hours and conditions, and the same wages and war
bonuses as the men they have replaced. It also confirms that at the end of th
<>





 <>

Case studies
 Chainmakers at Cradley Heath (1910)
On her first visit to Cradley Heath, the trade union agitator Mary Macarthur described the
forges where the chains were made by women workers as akin to medieval torture
chambers. While the average pay during that period was 26 shillings a week for men and
11s a week for women, the domestic chainmakers in Cradley Heath earned just 5s to 6s for
a hard 54-hour week.

After a national campaign against low pay by the Anti-Sweating League, the government
introduced legislation to end “sweating” in four trades, including the domestic chain trade,
where a minimum wage of 11s 3d a week was set. The employers at Cradley Heath in the
West Midlands refused to pay the new wage rate. In response, the National Federation of
Women Workers (NFWW) called a meeting in August 1910 at which the women refused to
work at the old rates. About 800 women workers began a strike, going on daily marches.

The women chain makers at Cradley Heath who went on strike for a minimum wage.
Credit:

TUC Collections, London Metropolitan University

Macarthur made a film exposing the miserable conditions of the chainmakers, which won
the strikers much support and the strike gained momentum. Collections were held outside
church congregations and football grounds. Within a month, 60% of employers had agreed
to the new minimum wage rates. The remaining employers were boycotted until, 6 weeks
later, they too agreed to pay. On 22 October, the women won a minimum wage for the first
time in history, doubling their pay to 11s 3d a week. By 1911, the NFWW Cradley Heath
Branch had 1700 members.

For more on the Cradley Heath chain makers, see: Chainmakers.pdf

Women and work

y
-1939

970

sent

Links
Women on the Home Front, 1914-1918
During the First World War, more and more women took over from men in British industry.
Many women worked in munitions, allowing for a rapid rise in production; they also worked
on maintaining coal, gas and power supplies. Still others took on work in transport or
offices. To women, the First World War resulted in a social revolution.
British women at war, 1914-1918
Women were required to make a significant contribution during the First World War. As
more men left for combat, women stepped in to take over 'men's work'. The government
used propaganda films to encourage women to get involved. Jobs carried out by women
included farm and factory work.
Women and the Great War
Women were unable to fight on the battlefields of Europe. Back at home in Britain, millions
of women volunteered to work in munitions factories in order to play their part in the
battle against Germany. This clip brings together the experiences of two women at the
Woolwich Royal Arsenal and how they work with hazard and danger as well as enthusiasm
and great pride.

What Was the Role of Britain’s Women in

World War One?
World War One saw the deployment of vast armies across Europe and the rest of the
world. Since these armies, and the British army was no exception, were almost
completely male, women were needed to do many of the critical tasks that kept the
economy running at home.

During World War One, women in Britain were recruited en masse into the
workforce.

While they were already present in the workforce, this was primarily within the textile
industry, and when there was a crisis in shell manufacturing in 1915, women were
drafted into munitions manufacture in large numbers in order to bolster production.

Over 750,000 British soldiers had died, which amounted to roughly 9% of the
population, which became known as the ‘lost generation’ of British soldiers.

With the introduction of conscription in 1916, even more men were dragged away
from industry and towards service in the armed forces, and the need for women to
replace them became even more urgent.

Munitions manufacture
By 1917, munitions factories primarily employing women produced 80% of weapons
and shells used by the British army.

By the time the armistice arrived, there were 950,000 women working in British
munitions factories and a further 700,000 employed in similar work in Germany.

Women were known as ‘canaries’ in the factories as they had to handle the TNT used
as the explosive agent in munitions, which caused their skin to turn yellow.

There was little protective equipment or safety gear available, and there were also
several large factory explosions during the war. Around 400 women died in munitions
production during the war.

It is difficult to find an accurate estimate of the exact numbers of women employed in

industry due to the different legal statuses of women who were married and those who
were not married.

Female munition workers crying at the funeral of a colleague killed by an

accident at work in Swansea in August 1917. Credit: Imperial War
Museum / Commons.
Women’s employments rates clearly did explode during the war, increasing from
23.6% of the working age population in 1914, to between 37.7% and 46.7% in 1918.
Domestic workers were excluded from these figures, rendering an exact estimate
difficult. Married women became much more frequently employed, and constituted
over 40% of the female workforce by 1918.

Service in the armed forces

Women’s role in the armed forces Following a War Office investigation, which
showed that many of the jobs that men were doing on the frontline could be done by
women as well, women began to be drafted into the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp
(WAAC).

Branches of the navy and RAF, the Women’s Royal Naval Service and the Women’s
Royal Air Force, were set up in November 1917 and April 1918 respectively. Over
100,000 women joined Britain’s army during World War One.

A few women abroad served in a more direct military capacity.

In the Ottoman Empire there were a limited number of female snipers and the Russian
Provisional Government of 1917 established fighting women’s units, though their
deployment was limited as Russia withdrew from the war.

One significant development in women’s role in the war was in nursing. Although it
had long been an occupation associated with women, the sheer scale of World War
One allowed a greater number of women to get away from their peacetime
domesticity.

Furthermore, nursing was in the process of emerging as a true profession as opposed

to simply voluntary aid. In 1887, Ethel Gordon Fenwick had established the British
Nurses’ Association:

“to unite all British nurses in membership of a recognised profession and to

provide… evidence of their having received systematic training.”

This gave a higher status to military nurses than was the case in previous wars.

The WSPU completely halted all campaigning for women’s suffrage during the war.
They wanted to support the war effort, but were also willing to use that support to
benefit their campaign.
80,000 British women volunteered in the various nursing services which operated
during the war. They worked alongside nurses from Britain’s colonies and dominions,
including around 3,000 Australians and 3,141 Canadians.

In 1917, they were joined by a further 21,500 from the U.S. Army, who at the time
recruited female nurses exclusively.

Edith Cavell was probably the most celebrated nurse of the war. She helped 200
Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium and was executed by the Germans as a
result — an act which caused outrage around the world.

The women’s movement was split over whether to support the war. During the war,
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst led the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU), which had previously used militant campaigning to try and get women the
vote, in supporting the war effort.

Sylvia Pankhurst remained opposed to the war and broke away from the WSPU in
1914.
 A suffragette meeting in Caxton Hall, Manchester, England circa 1908.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Emmeline Pankhurst stand in the center
of the platform. Credit: New York Times / Commons.
The WSPU completely halted all campaigning for women’s suffrage during the war.
They wanted to support the war effort, but were also willing to use that support to
benefit their campaign.

This tactic appeared to work, as in February 1918, the Representation of the People
Act gave the vote to all men over 21 years of age and to all women over 30.

It would be another ten years before all women over 21 received the vote. In
December 1919, Lady Astor became the first woman to take up a seat in Parliament.

The issue of wages

Women were paid less than men, despite performing largely the same labour. A report
in 1917 found that there should be equal pay granted for equal work, but presumed
that women would output less than men due to their ‘lesser strength and special health
problems’.

Average pay early in the war was 26 shillings a week for men, and 11 shillings a week
for women. On a visit to chainmaking factory Cradley Heath in the West Midlands,
the trade union agitator Mary MacArthur described the women’s working conditions
as akin to medieval torture chambers.

Domestic chainmakers in the factory earned between 5 and 6 shillings for a 54-hour
week.
 The logistics involved in supplying and cooking for such a vast number
of men spread out over a distance was a complex task. It would have been
slightly easier for those who were encamped behind the lines and so
could be served by a canteen such as this. Credit: National Library of
Scotland / Commons.
After a national campaign against low pay by one woman’s group, the government
legislated in favour of these women and set a minimum wage of 11s 3d a week.

The employers at Cradley Heath refused to pay the new wage rate. In response,
around 800 women went on strike, until they forced concessions.

After the war

The lower wages paid to women provoked anxiety among men that employers would
simply continue to employ women after the war finished, but this largely did not
occur.

Employers were more than happy to lay off women in order to employ returning
soldiers, although this prompted resistance and widespread striking from women after
the war was over.
 There was also an issue due to the sheer loss of male life in the battlefields of western
Europe, which saw some women unable to find husbands.

American Women in World War II: On the Home Front and Beyond
American women played important roles during World War II, both at home and in
uniform. Not only did they give their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers to the war
effort, they gave their time, energy, and some even gave their lives.

Reluctant to enter the war when it erupted in 1939, the United States quickly committed
itself to total war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That commitment included
utilizing all of America’s assets—women included. The Axis powers, on the other hand,
were slow to employ women in their war industries. Hitler derided Americans as
degenerate for putting their women to work. The role of German women, he said, was to
be good wives and mothers and to have more babies for the Third Reich.

When the war began, quickie marriages became the norm, as teenagers married their
sweethearts before their men went overseas. As the men fought abroad, women on the
Home Front worked in defense plants and volunteered for war-related organizations, in
addition to managing their households. In New Orleans, as the demand for public
transportation grew, women even became streetcar “conductorettes” for the first time.
When men left, women “became proficient cooks and housekeepers, managed the
finances, learned to fix the car, worked in a defense plant, and wrote letters to their
soldier husbands that were consistently upbeat.” (Stephen Ambrose, D-Day, 488) Rosie
the Riveter helped assure that the Allies would have the war materials they needed to
defeat the Axis.

 More

The role of women in the First World War

The majority of writing about women during the First

World War tends to focus on their roles as nurses or
workers on the Home Front, but few look at the
militarisation of women that took place during those
four and a half years.

In 1914 war was very much a man’s world and it was unthinkable for women to fight alongside men,
yet by end of the war over 200,000 women were in uniform officially serving for their countries. Even
then, most of the women were kept away from the Front and behind the line of fire and this is reflected
in the way in which historians generally deal with the wartime experiences of men and women
separately.
There were a small, but significant number of women who managed to blur the lines of gender division
and actively sought a more prominent role. In the face of opposition from their governments and the
armed services, these women formed voluntary units in the early months of the conflict. They adopted
military-style uniforms and established themselves overseas in mainland Europe. They went on to
provide invaluable support services to the military where it was most required, from driving
ambulances to setting up soup kitchens and first-aid posts in the trenches. The women tended to be
middle-class and were independently wealthy, able to fund their organisations and call on generous
benefactors.

In Britain the Voluntary Aid Detachment scheme was intended to provide medical support for the
country’s home defence, but their commander Katharine Furse set up a series of medical contingents in
France. Despite rejections from the War Office, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry operated
independently in both Belgium and France. Meanwhile Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm, known as
the Women of Pervyse, set up a first-aid post in the Yser region of Belgium, regularly venturing into
the trenches and even no-man’s land. Qualified women doctors formed their own hospitals treating
soldiers and civilians along both the Western and Eastern Fronts when they were denied commissions
in the military medical services.

Women in the forces

The contribution of these women has long been obscured by the sheer number of men who fought in
the conflict. In Britain alone around five million men joined the army and nearly one million of these
men were killed. In this new, modern and highly-mechanised war with alarmingly high death tolls,
there was a desperate shortage of manpower. What these women, along with those on the Home Front
demonstrated was that when it mattered, women were quite capable of taking on war work and more
responsibility. The British Army tried various schemes to swell the ranks and encourage more men to
enlist, but in 1916 the government was forced to introduce conscription. Even then the shortage of men
in combat roles was acute and discussions began about replacing men in auxiliary roles with women,
releasing them for frontline duties. This time though the government would be in charge of the female
forces, they didn’t want any more independent voluntary groups defying their authority. Britain decided
to employ working-class women, who were able to step straight into jobs ranging from waitresses and
cooks, to despatch riders and code-breakers with minimal training. The Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps and Women’s Royal Naval Service were established in 1917 followed by the Women’s Royal
Air Force in 1918.

Although the women were kept away from the trenches, the accelerated development of long range
artillery and air power, meant that in the latter years of the war, even the base camps and hospital cities
were no longer safe as the war zone rapidly expanded. Other countries established similar auxiliary
services for women, such as the female Yeoman in the US Navy and the ‘Hello Girls’ who worked as
telephone operators for the U.S. Army in France. Russia was the only country to form a women’s
combat battalion. In 1917 when Russia was in the grip of political revolution and its army faced mass
desertion, the Provisional Government formed an all-female unit called the Women’s Battalion of
Death. It was an attempt to shame the disillusioned men into re-joining the fight, but the experiment
was deemed a failure when the Bolsheviks rose to power that autumn. As Russia turned its back on its
 imperial past, the women’s bravery as they went over the top and took the German trenches was largely
forgotten.

In recent decades the role of women has received an increasing amount of attention. Assessing their
contribution to the war, most historians have looked at how women were rewarded with suffrage after
over half a century of political campaigning. But the significance of their contribution can also be seen
in how readily women’s auxiliary forces were employed during the Second World War and the
assertion of woman’s role in the military.

Search

YOU ARE HERE

1. LEARN /
2. ABOUT WWI /
3. WOMEN IN WWI

WOMEN IN WORLD WAR I

Learn about the participation of women in
the war
At the time of the First World War, most women were barred from voting or serving in
military combat roles. Many saw the war as an opportunity to not only serve their
countries but to gain more rights and independence. With millions of men away from
home, women filled manufacturing and agricultural positions on the home front. Others
provided support on the front lines as nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, translators
and, in rare cases, on the battlefield.
One observer wrote that American women “do anything they were given to do; that their
hours are long; that their task is hard; that for them there is small hope of medals and
citations and glittering homecoming parades.”

ON THE HOME FRONT

The nations at war mobilized their entire populations. The side that could produce more
weapons and supply more troops would prevail in the end. Women took on new roles in
the work force, notably in war production and agriculture.

In 1914, the German armaments producer Krupp employed almost no women. By 1917,
women made up nearly 30 percent of its 175,000 workers and a nationwide total of
nearly 1.4 million German women were employed in the war labor force. Britain also
stepped up its arms production by expanding the employment of women. In July 1914,
3.3 million women worked in paid employment in Britain. By July 1917, 4.7 million did.
British women served in uniform as well in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. In fact,
the last known surviving veteran of World War I was Florence Green of the RAF, who
died in 2012.
 A French woman working as an airplane mechanic.
Click image for more information.

As women took traditional male jobs in the United States, African American women
were able to make their first major shift from domestic employment to work in offices
and factories. Recent research also shows that a limited number of African American
women served overseas as volunteers with the YMCA.

“The women worked as ammunition testers, switchboard

operators, stock takers. They went into every kind of
factory devoted to the production of war materials, from
the most dangerous posts in munition plants to the
delicate sewing in aeroplane factories.”
- Alice Dunbar Nelson, American Poet and Civil Rights Activist, on African American women’s efforts
during the war, 1918

But even women in more traditional roles contributed to the war effort. Every housewife
in the U.S. was asked to sign a pledge card stating that she would “carry out the
directions and advice of the Food Administrator in the conduct of my household, in so
far as my circumstances permit.” This meant canning food for future use, growing
vegetables in the backyard and limiting consumption of meat, wheat and fats. Most of
all, women were expected to bolster the morale of their families at home and loved ones
overseas.
American wartime posters encouraging food conservation. Click images for more information.

DOCTORS, NURSES AND AMBULANCE

DRIVERS
The Salvation Army, the Red Cross and many other organizations depended on
thousands of female volunteers. The American Red Cross operated hospitals to care for
war casualties, staffed by nurses, hundreds of whom died in service during the war.
Thousands of women also served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and the Navy Nurse
Corps. While the American Expeditionary Forces were still preparing to go overseas,
U.S. Army nurses were sent ahead and assigned to the British Expeditionary Force. By
June 1918, there were more than 3,000 American nurses in over 750 in British-run
hospitals in France.

EDITH CAVELL ›
Learn about the life and death of the British nurse who helped soldiers
escape from German-occupied Belgium.
While nurses were accepted at the Front, women physicians faced obstacles putting
their hard-earned skills to work. When these women were rejected from service in the
U.S. Army Medical Corps, many sought other opportunities to serve the war effort: as
civilian contract surgeons, with the Red Cross or other humanitarian relief organizations
and even in the French Army. The Medical Women’s National Association, for example,
raised money to send their own doctors overseas to work in hospitals run by the
American Red Cross. By the end of the war, nearly 80 women doctors from this
organization were at work in the devastated regions of Europe, caring for civilians and
soldiers and treating diseases such as influenza and typhoid.

During the last Allied offensive in the summer and fall of 1918, many woman doctors,
nurses and aides operated near the front lines, providing medical care for soldiers
wounded in combat.

“I had just given this poor boy anesthesia when a bomb hit.
We were supposed to hit the floor, but he was out and
didn’t know what was going on. I took a tray and put it
over our heads. It wasn’t because I was brave. I was just
scared.”
- Medical Corps anesthetist Sophie Gran. Gran was one of the first woman anesthetists with the A.E.F. in
France and the only woman anesthetist with Mobile Hospital Unit #1. She went on to become the first
president of California Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 1931.

A female nurse assisting doctor with an operation. Click image for more information.

The automobile age was just getting underway in WWI, and motorized ambulances
became key to medical treatment on the battlefield. Many women who knew how to
drive volunteered to go overseas to serve as ambulance and truck drivers or mechanics.
They delivered medical supplies, transported patients to hospitals and drove through
artillery fire to retrieve the wounded.

Many of the women drivers of the Red Cross Motor Service and other ambulance groups
used their own cars, including Marie Curie. Curie invented a mobile X-ray unit,
radiological cars nicknamed "little Curies," and ultimately trained 150 women to be X-
ray operators on the battlefront, of which Curie herself was one - an act that she believed
contributed to her later death from radiation exposure.
FEMALE YEOMEN
Despite thousands of new recruits, the U.S. Navy was short-handed at the beginning of
World War I. Vague wording in a section of the Naval Act of 1916 outlining who could
serve created a loophole: women were able to join the ranks as Yeomen, non-
commissioned officers. Around 12,000 women enlisted in the Navy under the title,
“Yeoman (F).” Most women Yeomen served stateside on naval bases, replacing men who
had deployed to Europe. While many female recruits performed clerical duties, some
worked as truck drivers, mechanics, radio operators, telephone operators, translators,
camouflage artists and munition workers. They had the same responsibilities as their
male counterparts and received the same pay of $28.75 per month.

Telephone operators near the front, France. Click image for more information.

THE “HELLO GIRLS”

Aiming to improve communications on the Western front between the Allied Forces,
General John J. Pershing called for the creation of the Signal Corps Female Telephone
Operators Unit. The unit recruited women who were bilingual in French and English to
serve as telephone switchboard operators on the Western front. The women received
physical training, observed strict military protocol, wore identity discs and worked very
close to the front lines. These female recruits were nicknamed the “Hello Girls” (a term
which some of them felt disparaged their efforts) and became known for their bravery
and focus under pressure. However, upon their return to the United States after the end
of the war, the “Hello Girls” did not receive veteran status or benefits. It wasn’t until
1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed legislation, that the few surviving women
telephone operators received recognition of their veteran status.

GRACE D. BANKER ›
Learn more about the Chief Operator of the U.S. Signal Corps’ women
telephone operators.

FEMALE SOLDIERS
Though it would be years before many other countries allowed female soldiers, in
Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia women did serve as combat troops. The best
known of these soldiers was Maria Bochkareva, the founder of the Russian “Women's
Battalion of Death.” The first woman to lead a Russian military unit, Bochkareva went as
far as to petition the Czar for permission to enlist in the Imperial Russian army in 1914
and was granted permission to join. Initially harassed and ostracized, Bochkareva
persisted, overcoming battle injuries and becoming a decorated soldier and commander.

Her all-female battalion of shock troops, the 1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death,
was created in 1917 to shame men into continuing the fight. Though their training was
rushed, the battalion was sent to the Russian western front to participate in the
Kerensky Offensive in July 1917. Other female units were also formed for their
propaganda value, but few saw combat outside of Bochkareva’s unit and the 1st
Petrograd Women's Battalion, which helped defend the Winter Palace in the October
Revolution. Ultimately, Russia ended their involvement in WWI with the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918.

SHARE THIS WITH A FRIEND

Share29
Women's Role in World War I

During the First World War, women rose to the occasion and filled many
necessary roles
 1917 World War 1 U.S. Navy
poster
Related Links

 Women's History
Month
 Active Duty Military
Female Personnel by
Rank / Grade
 A History of Women in
the U.S. Military
 Women's Role in the
Civil War

Before the First World War, women had been a part of many war efforts in various roles, but, in order to
serve alongside men, they had to cloak themselves in disguise. However, this began to change during
World War I, the first war where the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps allowed women to enlist. More than
12,000 enlisted and about 400 died during the war.
Women in the U.S. also began working for the American Red Cross and United Service Organizations, as
well as in factory, office, transportation, and other jobs vacated by men who were off at war. By the end of
World War I, women in the U.S. made up 24% of aviation plant workers. In Great Britain, of 24 million
women, 1.7 million stayed at work in domestic service during the war, while 800,000 worked in textiles,
600,000 in clothing, and 260,000 in government jobs or teaching.

Men's Work
Even though women were needed, trade unions in industries such as ship building and engineering
strongly protested women doing “men's work.“ Once the war ended, women lost the jobs they were doing
to cover for the men while the men were at war. However, because of the strong effort and participation
by women during the First World War, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and several European
countries approved the right to vote for women in the years following World War I.
Although some armed services began to allow women to enlist, most women who saw or experienced
any First World War combat did so through nursing. British women worked as nurses through Queen
Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry and Voluntary Aid Detachment. All
three had women working as nurses on the front lines by 1915. More than 2,800 Canadian women served
in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. Like the U.S., Canada allowed women in the military in roles
other than nursing for the first time during World War I. Women in Canada received first aid, vehicle
maintenance, and small arms training to serve as guards at home if needed.

Women's Battalions
The only country to deploy a substantial amount of female combat troops was Russia in 1917. Russia's
Women's Battalions achieved success on the battlefield, but did not help increase war propaganda like
the government had hoped. Therefore, Russia ended the Women's Battalions within a year.
The following are some of the women who played a significant role in World War I. Note the variety of
ways they contributed. Also, even though women were accepted and needed for various jobs, a few
women still chose to disguise themselves as men in order to participate in combat.

 In 1914, Dorothy Lawrence disguised herself as a man to participate in World War I as an English
soldier.
 Flora Sandes, from England, joined an ambulance unit in Serbia in 1914 then went on to become
a Serbian army officer.
 British nurse Edith Cavell cared for injured soldiers from both sides while in German-
occupied Belgium. She was executed in 1915 by the Germans for helping British soldiers escape.
 Russian women Olga Krasilnikov and Natalie Tychmini disguised themselves as men to fight in
the war in 1915. Both received the Cross of St. George.
 In 1915, Madame Arno, a French artist, organized a group of women in Paris to fight the
Germans.
 Loretta Perfectus Walsh became the first woman to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces in an
occupation other than nurse when she enlisted in the U.S. Navy on March 17, 1917.
 On May 20, 1917, Army nurses Helen Wood and Edith Ayres became the first women in the U.S.
Military to be killed in the line of duty. They were on the USS Mongolia, en route to France, when
one of the guns exploded on deck.
 Twins Genevieve and Lucille Baker became the first uniformed women to serve in the U.S. Coast
Guard.
 Opha Mae Johnson became the first female U.S. Marine when she enlisted in the Marine Corps
Women's Reserve on August 13, 1918.
 Serbian war hero Milunka Savić became the most decorated female in the history of warfare for
her contribution during World War I. Along with the Russian Cross of St. George, the English
medal of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael, Serbian Miloš Obilić medal, two French
Legion of Honors, she is the only female recipient of the French Croix de Guerre (War Cross) with
the gold palm attribute.


 © 2000–2019 Sandbox Networks, Inc., publishing as Infoplease

Home
Sarah Paterson
Wednesday 13 June 2018
Pressure from women for their own uniformed service to assist the war
effort began in August 1914. Many organisations sprang up, such as the
Women’s Volunteer Reserve and Lady Londonderry’s Women’s Legion,
which provided cooks for Army camps.

The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was established in

December 1916. Its formation was largely due to a War Office
investigation which showed that a large number of non-combatant tasks
were being performed by soldiers in France. It was clear that women
could do many of these jobs, potentially freeing up 12,000 men for
service in the front line. The first party of 14 women arrived on the
Western Front on 31 March 1917. Eventually, 9,000 women served with
the unit in France.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Clothing is being issued by the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC)
from a Nissen hut damaged by an air raid at Abbeville, 22 May 1918.
In April 1918, the WAAC was renamed Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary
Corps (QMAAC). Over 57,000 women served with it, at home and
abroad, before it was disbanded on 27 September 1921.

The Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was formed in November

1917, with 3,000 women. This doubled in size with 'Wrens' working in
over 100 different roles.

The Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was born on 1 April 1918 with
the Royal Air Force. Members of both the WAAC and WRNS transferred
to the new service, which grew to 32,000, serving at home and in
Germany and France. They undertook mechanical and technical roles as
well as cooking, driving and administration. The WRAF and WRNS were
both dissolved in 1920, but all three women’s services were
reformed just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
© IWM (D 5721)
WOMEN IN WARTIME
The Vital Role Of Women In The Second World War

Women were conscripted in December 1941. They were given a choice

of working in industry or joining one of the auxiliary services – the
Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the Women's Auxiliary Air Force
(WAAF) or the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS).
© IWM (Art.IWM ART 2271)
WOMEN IN WARTIME
12 Things You Didn't Know About Women In The First World War

The First World War brought many changes in the lives of British
women. It is often represented as having had a wholly positive impact,
opening up new opportunities in the world of work and strengthening
their case for the right to vote. The reality is more complex.
©IWM (Q 27881)
WOMEN IN WARTIME
Nine Women Reveal The Dangers Of Working In A Munitions Factory

Munitions workers played a crucial role in the First World War. They
supplied the troops at the front with the armaments and equipment they
needed to fight. They also freed up men from the workforce to join the
armed forces.
Privacy and cookiesCopyrightContact us
Prior to World War II, women were mostly homemakers. Those that
worked outside the home usually worked as secretaries, receptionists or
department store clerks.

Once America entered World War II, however, men went off to war by the
millions and women stepped into the civilian and military jobs they left
behind. Women were proud to serve their country - but how did their
service during the war inspire their fight for social change and equality?
Rosie the Riveter was more influential
than glamour girls.
As America’s war machine went into action, the government initiated a
massive publicity campaign to persuade women to replace men on
assembly lines in factories and defense plants. They produced posters
and film reels of glamorous women in the workplace to entice women to
serve their country as part of the home-front labor force.

Yet the not-so-glamorous image of Rosie the Riveter depicting a

confident-looking woman wearing coveralls and a red bandana and
flexing her muscles under the headline, “We Can Do It!” remains one of
the best-known icons of World War II.

Meant to inspire patriotism, the image of Rosie the Riveter was a new
and different way of portraying women, and many historians cite her as
an inspiration for female liberation.

Naomi Parker, more famously known as Rosie the Riveter, working in

heels at the Alameda Naval Air station during WWII.
 Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Women in civilian jobs learned

valuable skills.
According to Kevin Hymel, historian at the U.S. Air Force Medical Service
History Office,“With their men away, women became more self-sufficient.
Many brought tools home from work and used them on their own home
repairs. They took on domestic roles they never had before.”

It’s estimated that up to six million women joined the civilian work force
during World War II in both white and blue-collar jobs, such as:

 streetcar operators
 taxi drivers
 construction workers
 steel workers
 lumber workers
 munitions workers
 agriculture workers
 government workers
 office workers
Women served in dangerous roles in
the U.S. military.
Around 350,000 women served in the military during World War II.
“Women in uniform took on mostly clerical duties as well as nursing jobs,”
said Hymel.

“The motto was to free a man up to fight. Some women became

translators in Naval Intelligence, enabling them to read classified enemy
communiques. One woman said when she was inducted to Naval
Intelligence, an admiral spoke to the assembled women and told them, ‘If
you talk about anything you do here, we can legally kill you.’”

Women also served as truck drivers, radio operators, engineers,

photographers and non-combat pilots. And the all-black, all-
women 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was sent first to
Birmingham, England, and then to Rouen, France, to process huge
backlogs of undelivered mail.

According to Hymel, “The women in the most danger were nurses, who
often came under artillery and aircraft fire near the front lines. They lived
in the elements, sometimes in mud, heat and freezing temperatures, yet
performed their duties alongside their male counterparts.”

Two female war workers walk along a dock at the Electric Boat Company
in Groton, Connecticut, 1943. The company produced more than 70
submarines and almost 400 PT boats during World War II.
Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Working women endured harassment,

miserable working conditions and low
pay.
Working women on the home front faced unique challenges, too. Those
with children struggled with child care and caring for a household on their
own. Many had to learn to manage their finances for the first time and
cope with a tight budget further strained by war rationing and the call to
buy war bonds.
At first, women weren’t always welcomed into the workplace. They
received less pay and some men looked down on them and felt they
weren’t up to handling a “man’s job.” They often faced sexual
harassment, long hours and dangerous working conditions.

But as women performed their jobs admirably and the demand for
workers increased, men’s attitudes toward them gradually became more
positive.

Women’s roles continued to expand in

the postwar era.
The call for working women was meant to be temporary and women were
expected to leave their jobs after the war ended. Some women were okay
with this - but they left their posts with new skills and more confidence.
Women who remained in the workplace were usually demoted.

But after their selfless efforts during World War II, men could no longer
claim superiority over women. Women had enjoyed and even thrived on a
taste of financial and personal freedom - and many wanted more.

Though progress was slow over the next two decades, serving their
country in the military and at home empowered women to fight for the
right to work in nontraditional jobs for equal pay and for equal rights in
the workplace and beyond.

"OVER THERE" - GEORGE M. COHAN

AFRICAN

The period from 1890 through 1920 was known as the Progressive Era in America, an age of
increased industrialization and production. Social problems such as labor conditions for
children and women, and public health and safety, became prominent national issues. To address
some of these social issues, women’s clubs and organizations—like the Young Women’s
Christian Association (YWCA) and the national General Federation of Women’s Clubs
(GFWC)—were formed. The National Association of Colored Women was organized to respond
to racism and other social issues impacting African-American women and their families.
American women also increasingly vocalized their need for equality in the workforce. In 1903,
the National Women’s Trade Union League was founded by Jane Addams and Mary Anderson
to help protect female workers. When America entered the Great War, the number of women in
the workforce increased. Their employment opportunities expanded beyond traditional women’s
professions, such as teaching and domestic work, and women were now employed in clerical
positions, sales, and garment and textile factories. During the war, women held jobs that
previously were reserved for men, including work in transportation and construction as well as in
war production.

Women in Military Service: Nurses &

War Support
Women were eager to show their patriotic support for the war effort. During the Great War,
21,498 U.S. Army nurses and 1,476 U.S. Navy nurses served in military hospitals in the United
States and overseas. It was the first time Army and Navy military nurses performed active duty
abroad. In the United States, African Americans lived and worked in a segregated society and
this was reflected in their wartime participation. Founded in 1908, the National Association of
Colored Graduate Nurses supported black nurses in their fight against racial discrimination. As a
result of increased pressure to allow African-American women to participate in the Red Cross,
18 black nurses were stationed at Army bases in Illinois and Ohio to care for African-American
soldiers and German prisoners of war.
For the first time, women who were not nurses were allowed to enlist in the armed forces,
serving stateside and thereby freeing male soldiers to go overseas. The Navy and the Marines
accepted 13,000 women into active duty and a much smaller number were accepted into the
Coast Guard. These women served primarily in clerical positions, with the same rank,
responsibilities and benefits as men, including identical pay of $28.75 per month. After the war,
they received honorable discharges and were treated as veterans eligible for veteran’s benefits.
The U.S. Army had more difficulty in accepting women for military service. While it allowed
nurses to enlist in the Army Nurse Corps, they received unequal pay and were not allowed to
have a military rank. Civilian women worked in the Army as contract clerical employees and
volunteers. They also participated under military command with the Allied Expeditionary Force
in France—but only as civilians without military status. Six thousand women also served as
telephone operators, clerks, typists, stenographers, translators and canteen hostesses.

Paper Doll
The Suffrage Movement
 Because women were taking on new roles in society, the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, founded in 1890, began to push for women’s voting rights. In September 1918,
President Wilson urged the Senate to pass the 19th Amendment to allow women the right to vote,
as the U.S. House of Representatives had already done.

American women and World War II

During World War II American women took news jobs in the military and defense industry.
Google ClassroomFacebookTwitter
Email

Overview
 World War II provided unprecedented opportunities for American women to
enter into jobs that had never before been open to women, particularly in the
defense industry.

 Women faced challenges in overcoming cultural stereotypes against working

women, as well as finding adequate childcare during working hours. Minority
women also endured discrimination and dislocation during the war years.

 350,000 women served in the armed forces during World War II.
 After the war, many women were fired from factory jobs. Nevertheless,
within a few years, about a third of women older than 14 worked outside the
home.

Women on the home front

World War II is often falsely identified as the first time that American
women worked outside of the home in large numbers. In fact, about a quarter
of women worked outside the home in 1940. Before World War II, however,
women's paid labor was largely restricted to "traditionally female"
professions, such as typing or sewing, and most women were expected to
leave the labor force as soon as they had children, if not as soon as they
married.^11start superscript, 1, end superscript

World War II changed both the type of work women did and the volume at
which they did it. Five million women entered the workforce between 1940-
1945. The gap in the labor force created by departing soldiers meant
opportunities for women. In particular, World War II led many women to
take jobs in defense plants and factories around the country. These jobs
provided unprecedented opportunities to move into occupations previously
thought of as exclusive to men, especially the aircraft industry, where a
majority of workers were women by 1943.

But most women in the labor force during World War II did not work in the
defense industry. The majority took over other factory or office jobs that had
been held by men. Although women often earned more money than ever
before, it was still far less than men received for doing the same jobs.
Nevertheless, many achieved a degree of financial self-reliance that was
enticing.
The challenges of wartime work
Working women, especially mothers, faced great challenges during World
War II. To try to address the dual role of women as workers and
mothers, Eleanor Roosevelt urged her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt to
approve the first US government childcare facilities under the Community
Facilities Act of 1942. Eventually, seven centers, servicing 105,000 children,
were built. The First Lady also urged industry leaders to build model
childcare facilities for their workers. Still, these efforts did not meet the full
need for childcare for working mothers.

Photograph of an African American woman working on a battleship.

Eastine Cowner at work on the SS George Washington Carver, 1943. 17 Liberty ships were named for
outstanding African Americans. Imagecourtesy Library of Congress.

There was also some cultural resistance to women going to work in such
male-dominated environments. In order to recruit women for factory jobs, the
government created a propaganda campaign centered on a figure known
as Rosie the Riveter. Rosie was tough yet feminine. To reassure men that the
demands of war would not make women too masculine, some factories gave
female employees lessons in how to apply makeup, and cosmetics were never
rationed during the war. Keeping American women looking their best was
believed to be important for morale.

Minority women faced particular difficulties during the World War II era.
African American women struggled to find jobs in the defense industry, and
found that white women were often unwilling to work beside them when they
did. Although factory work allowed black women to escape labor as domestic
servants for a time and earn better wages, most were fired after the war and
forced to resume work as maids and cooks.^22start superscript, 2, end
superscript

Japanese American women in western states had little access to new job
opportunities, given that the policy of Japanese internment had resettled them
in remote locations. Cramped into converted barns, living with as many as
eight people in a single room, Japanese American women struggled to retain
a semblance of normalcy in the face of terrible privation.^33start superscript,
3, end superscript

Women in the war

Approximately 350,000 American women joined the military during World
War II. They worked as nurses, drove trucks, repaired airplanes, and
performed clerical work. Some were killed in combat or captured as prisoners
of war. Over sixteen hundred female nurses received various decorations for
courage under fire.
 Photograph of four white women pilots from the Women's Airforce Service
Pilots division.
Women's Airforce Service Pilots flew planes from factories to military bases. Here, Frances Green,
Margaret Kirchner, Ann Waldner and Blanche Osborn leave their plane, "Pistol Packin' Mama," in
Ohio. Imagecourtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Those who joined the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew
planes from the factories to military bases.

Many women also flocked to work in a variety of civil service jobs. Others
worked as chemists and engineers, developing weapons for the war. This
included thousands of women who were recruited to work on the Manhattan
Project, developing the atomic bomb.

Minority women, like minority men, served in the war effort as well, though
the Navy did not allow black women into its ranks until 1944. As the
American military was still segregated for the majority of World War II,
African American women served in black-only units. Black nurses were only
permitted to attend to black soldiers.^44start superscript, 4, end superscript
Women after the war
Social commentators worried that when men returned from military service
there would be no jobs available for them, and admonished women to return
to their "rightful place" in the home as soon as victory was at hand. Although
as many as 75% of women reported that they wanted to continue working
after World War II, women were laid off in large numbers at the end of the
war.

But women's participation in the work force bounced back relatively quickly.
Despite the stereotype of the "1950s housewife," by 1950 about 32% of
women were working outside the home, and of those, about half were
married. World War II had solidified the notion that women were in the
workforce to stay.^55start superscript, 5, end superscript

What do you think?

What effect did World War II have on women's work?

Do you think Rosie the Riveter is a symbol of women's strength? Or was she
a symbol that women had to retain beauty standards during the war?

Which of the jobs available to women during wartime would you have
wanted, and why?

ADVERTISEMENT

AT WAR

The Many Roles of Women in War: Sniper,

Pilot, Death Camp Guard
 Image

A World War II British ration card, top, part of an exhibition called “Women in World War
II” at The International World War II Museum, in Natick, Mass.CreditCreditSteven
Senne/Associated Press
o
o

Staring at the faded blue-and-white stripes of a woman’s concentration-camp uniform, I

wondered how many members of my family died wearing one. I only know the names of
those who lived. I arrived at the exhibit called “Women in World War II,” at the
International Museum of World War II in Natick, Mass., expecting to see uniforms
belonging to those who served in the armed forces during the war. As a former
intelligence officer in the United States Navy, I was eager to encounter the stories of
women who paved the way: code breakers, radio operators, spies and saboteurs. I wasn’t
expecting reminders of just how unlikely it was that enough of my relatives survived that
I got to be born, decades later, in New York.
Image

Sue Wilkins, director of education at the museum, holds a 1945 newspaper photograph
that shows a window washer 10 floors above a Minneapolis street during World War II,
when women took over many jobs traditionally held by men.CreditSteven
Senne/Associated Press
My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. My great-grandparents, along with my
grandmother and her brothers, escaped Nazi Germany and arrived in the Boston area in
1939. For most of my life, I believed the duty to “never forget” was to remember the
millions who perished in the Holocaust. Yet the stories my grandmother and her
brothers told were about how their daily lives slowly changed as Nazism gained power.
The museum’s exhibit is a reminder that authoritarian regimes start subtly, as well as a
reminder that they could not take hold without the support of women. The duty of
remembering also involves understanding how the banal becomes brutality. In
Germany, a mother might have used a night light emblazoned with a swastika to make
her child feel safe at night. In Japan, women participated in “spiritual mobilization,”
embroidering special belts for fighter pilots. “If the museum had a subtitle,” Kenneth
Rendell, the museum’s director, said, “it would be that war is personal, and it’s
complex.”

[Get a weekly roundup of Times’ coverage of war delivered to your inbox. Sign up here]

Displaying the role of women tells the story of the war itself: Everyone participated, and
often in jobs that were once unheard-of for women. Most visitors are surprised to learn
that women’s wartime roles went beyond Rosie the Riveter-style industrial work,
according to Sue Wilkins, the museum’s education director. They were pilots and
snipers, garbage collectors and window washers, concentration-camp guards and
nurses. In the 1950s, the impulse to glorify the war and return to traditional values
obscured the full extent of women’s contributions. Artifacts in the exhibit leave no
doubt: a radio hidden under the false bottom of a baby carriage, used by the Resistance
in occupied France; United States Army Capt. Alice Burger’s Distinguished Flying Cross,
pinned to her uniform jacket. More than 350,000 women served in the United States
military; British women were drafted into civil defense roles in the Auxiliary Territorial
Service. (Queen Elizabeth, then an 18-year-old princess, volunteered.) In the Soviet Red
Army, women served in front-line combat roles. Women’s functions were sometimes
contradictory: The Nazi death machine was simultaneously obsessed with life, and to
propagate the so-called “master race,” the government rewarded women with a medal
called the German Mothers’ Cross of Honor, for having four children or more.
The Lebensborn program created birthing centers for women of “Aryan” descent, who
were encouraged to have children — typically out of wedlock — with SS officers.
Image
Sue Wilkins explains a pre-war German propaganda poster, extolling a Nazi
organization for women factory workers.CreditSteven Senne/Associated Press

In the United States, women’s wartime contributions were largely forgotten after the
war, but not without a certain amount of quiet debate. Their military service was
intended to be temporary. In 1948, the year that women were first accepted as regular
members of the armed forces, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower testified before the House
Armed Services Committee that he was initially “horror struck” by the idea of women in
the military but changed his mind after he saw them in action. During the war, Gen.
George C. Marshall commissioned a study to measure the effectiveness of mixed-gender
combat units. He and his staff were stunned by the finding that they performed better
than all-male units. As the historian D’Ann Campbell discovered in 1993, the study was
buried, because the general staff was concerned that the American public and
Congresswere opposed to expanding women’s roles in the armed forces. This debate had
nothing to do with what women were capable of, let alone what they wanted. It was a
matter of men being bothered by changing roles, Rendell observed. “When women were
brought in to do jobs traditionally done by men, men had a big problem with it. It
affected their own sense of what masculinity was.”

The museum doesn’t take positions on current debates, Rendell said; even so, it’s
impossible to not see parallels with contemporary issues. When I joined the military in
2009, ground combat jobs were still closed to women by Department of Defense policy.
But the sprawling post-9/11 conflicts had no definite front lines and no end in sight, and
operational realities led commanders to exploit every loophole possible to deploy
women in combat roles, even if it wasn’t reflected in their official job titles. I spent three
years in a special-operations unit whose primary mission was to deploy alongside Navy
SEALs and Green Berets. Women’s presence was seen as a necessary inconvenience:
These units needed intelligence, medical and logistical support, and often the best
person for the job was female. In some cases, women were specifically recruited in order
to work with the local population. In the United States’ war efforts, special operations
have been gender-integrated from their beginnings under the direction of the secretive
Office of Strategic Services during World War II. When all roles were officially opened to
 women, in 2016, it was a case of policy formally recognizing what had been practiced for
decades. The commander of United States Special Operations Command at the time,
Gen. Joseph Votel, released a video message supporting the policy, citing the role of
women in World War II.
Image
A British World War II recruitment poster created by the graphic designer Abram Games
to encourage women to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War
II.CreditSteven Senne/Associated Press
In one of the last display cases, a playing card depicts a female Navy officer. She’s
wearing the female-specific “bucket cover,” a hat developed for officers in the WAVES
(Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and still in service today. This item
is much-beloved by female officers precisely because of its historical significance. Unlike
other uniform items, which are often called “unisex” but are truly designed for men, the
bucket cover was specifically designed for women. This October, female officers will be
required to retire this uniform item in exchange for the men’s version. Many female
officers, myself included, think that eliminating one of the few traditions unique to
women amounts to an erasure of our history and heritage. It erases a connection to both
the work that women did during World War II and how hard they had to fight to do it in
the first place.

At the end of my museum tour, I took stock of artifacts around me. The uniform of a
female concentration-camp guard who might have killed my relatives. The summer
camouflage uniform of a woman in the Red Army who served as a sniper 70 years before
American women could. A wedding dress made from parachute silk. Images of women
performing the everyday tasks that kept their countries running. Horror, heroism and
daily life coexisted side by side. “The reality of war is very important to preserve,”
Rendell said, “because otherwise you can get a whole generation of politicians who were
never in a war, have no kids who served in the military and make decisions based on
what appears to be simplistic fact.”

The march to war is conducted step by mundane step. Everyone has a role, whether
through action or inaction. Driving home from the exhibit, I considered that perhaps the
commitment to “never forget” is a responsibility to consider the everyday. I called my
dad. I asked where he kept the memoirs my grandmother wrote to record her
experiences in a country that was slipping toward dictatorship, genocide and war. The
details that are most likely to be forgotten or erased contain the lessons that are most
critical to learn.

Changing lives: gender expectations

and roles during and after World War
One
 Article written by:Susan Grayzel
 Themes:Civilians, Historical debates
 Published:29 Jan 2014
Considering the roles of both men and women during World War One, Susan R
Grayzel asks to what extent the war challenged gender roles and to what degree
society accepted them.
The First World War was a cataclysm that disrupted countless lives. As a modern, total war, it
brought men and women into active battle zones across Europe as well as in parts of Africa and
Asia. New technology further extended the borders of the war. Air power made it possible to launch
attacks against civilian populations at some distance from traditional frontlines, and U-boats sank
passenger ships, such as the Lusitania in 1915, that were loaded with men, women, and children
crossing the Atlantic. In addition, albeit with less novelty, invading armies ended up occupying
swathes of territory. Civilian women and men in Belgium, the north and east of France, Serbia, and
parts of the Russian empire among other locales came under the control of occupying powers.
Photograph of a mother and child wearing gas masks

Photograph showing a mother and child wearing gas masks (detail)

View images from this item (1)

Usage terms Public Domain
Postcard of German zeppelin that crashed on Fanø
Postcard showing the German Zeppelin L3 after it crashed on the Danish island of Fanø, 1915.

View images from this item (1)

Usage terms Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives licence

Men, women, and the state

Even where women did not live with such daily reminders of war, states and agents of civil society
invested considerable energy in trying to connect women who were not near war zones with the front
lines via propaganda. In addition, the scope and duration of the war meant that governments
enlisted women in the war effort by reorganising basic aspects of their lives. By rationing,
governments could alter the food women could obtain and eat; by imposing censorship, they tried to
restrict the information they could know or share. The waging of the war placed enormous
expectations upon able-bodied men in the prime of life to serve in the military and upon their female
counterparts to contribute to the war effort in many ways, in addition to maintaining their domestic
roles.

The letter from the front - those who read

Postcard showing a family gathering around a table to read a letter sent from the Front.

View images from this item (1)

Did assumptions about gender roles alter during the war?

Despite the upheavals that affected many women and men, basic ideas about gender remained
fairly consistent throughout the war. Warring states defined the essence of male service to the nation
as combat. Even those men too young or old or ill to wield arms were expected to support the war,
and some men in key industries were required to stay at their jobs in order to ensure the output of
basic supplies. Most nations also called upon and celebrated women as mothers, the representative
of family life and domesticity. Indeed, women’s designated role as guardians of morality meant that
in most countries, ‘separation allowances’ – funds paid to soldiers’ dependents – were tied to their
good behaviour, including in some cases demonstrating their sobriety and fidelity. Women could
support the military effort and the nation’s men in uniform as nurses, female military auxiliaries,
ambulance drivers, farm workers, and factory labourers as well as in many other occupations,
something evident in many of these documents. However, they were also celebrated for their quiet
heroism in keeping the home intact whilst their men were absent. For all of women’s extensive and
varied war work, most public celebrations of their contributions underlined that such labour was part
of ‘doing their bit for the duration’.
1.
2.
 Previous
 Next
As was the case with all societal expectations about gender roles, individuals could take on or reject
these assumptions. Some women publicly embraced new access to traditionally male occupations
and had no wish to relinquish them when the war was over. Others faced economic, physical and
psychological challenges that could make them eager for a return to pre-war conditions. Some men
found meaning in their military service and sacrifices; others found themselves traumatised by the
carnage unleashed by modern weaponry. Millions of men faced devastating injuries from poison
gas, machine gun fire, and powerful artillery shells. Dissent from gender norms was perhaps more
easily tolerated for women as they took on roles that had previously been the work of men (in
munitions factories for example). Male dissent from gender norms was not so readily accepted.
While pacifist or antimilitarist actions by women could be understood, if not excused, as stemming
from expectations that women desired peace above all, similar expressions by men, such as their
taking on the new role of the conscientious objector in Britain, could call into question their very
masculinity.
Women's war work in maintaining the industries of the United Kingdon

Publication detailing the work carried out by British women on the home front.

View images from this item (11)

Usage terms Public Domain

The legacy of the war and assumptions about gender roles

Because the war destroyed so many lives and reshaped the international political order, it is
understandable to view it as a catalyst for enormous changes in all aspects of life, including ideas
about gender and the behaviour of women and men. The messy reality of the lives of individual men
and women is much harder to generalise about. There were visible changes in European politics,
society, and culture but also a certain degree of continuity. Most notably, the aftermath of the war
witnessed women gaining voting rights in many nations for the first time. Yet women’s full
participation in political life remained limited, and some states did not enfranchise their female
inhabitants until much later (1944 in France). Imperial subjects and racial minorities, such as those in
the United States, continued to be unable to exercise their full political rights. Socially, certain
demographic trends that were prevalent before the war persisted after it. Family sizes continued to
shrink despite renewed anxiety about falling birth rates and ongoing insistence on the significance of
motherhood for women and their nations. Economically, returning men displaced many women from
their wartime occupations, and many households now headed by women due to the loss of male
breadwinners faced new levels of hardship. Women did not gain or retain access to all professions,
and they did not come close to gaining equal pay for comparable work.
The Call, from Canada in Khaki

Illustration entitled 'The Call' depicting an idealised Canadian man being prepared for war by women
representing the Provinces of Canada, 1916.

View images from this item (1)

Usage terms Public Domain

Gender and cultural change

Cultural change may be the hardest to gauge. Certain norms of Western middle-class femininity all
but disappeared, and women’s visible appearance before 1914 and after 1918 markedly differed –
with many women having shorter hair and wearing shorter skirts or even trousers. New forms of
social interaction between the sexes and across class lines became possible, but expectations about
family and domestic life as the main concern of women remained unaltered. Furthermore, post-war
societies were largely in mourning. The extent to which the process of rebuilding required the
combined efforts of men and women in public and perhaps even more so in private shows the
shared human toll of this extraordinary conflict.
World War One: Women at War
by Ellen Castelow

As the war progressed and more and more men were required to maintain the British
army in the field, on the Home Front a manpower crisis loomed. This problem was
largely tackled by mobilising women to replace the men who had gone to fight.

The role of women in securing victory cannot be underestimated; indeed, one of the
reasons that Germany lost the war in 1918 was that she never succeeded in fully
mobilising her female population.

Although women had worked in some industries for many years, the First World War
brought women into the workplace on a scale never before witnessed. Not only this, but
in many cases these women came from the middle classes who had never previously
experienced manual work.

The most usual occupation for women pre-war was domestic service. This was
‘women’s work’, poorly paid and considered inferior to ‘men’s work’. It was also
expected that women would give up work once they were married.
Nursing was virtually the only area where women could experience the war at the front

After the introduction of military conscription in March 1916, it became vital to mobilise
women to fill the gaps in the factories, fields, transport and other essential areas.

In the fields, the Women’s Land Army employed over 260,000 women as farm
labourers, a vital role as allied merchant ships bringing supplies from overseas were
being menaced by German U-boats at sea.

Women living in the country were also encouraged to work together with the
Department of Agricultureto grow and preserve food. In 1915 the Secretary of the
Agricultural Organisation Society (AOS), John Nugent Harris appointed Canadian
Madge Watt to set up Women’s Institutes (WIs) across the UK. The Women’s Institute
movement had started in Canada in 1897 and Mrs Watt used her own experience of the
Metchosin Women’s Institute as a model for those in the UK. The first W.I meeting in
Britain took place at Llanfairpwllgwyngyll on Anglesey, North Wales on September 16th
1915.

The women who volunteered to work in industry were often sent some distance from
home. There was great debate about the effect of this type of work on the morality of
young women, particularly as many were away from their parents for the first time in
their lives, and they had money from their wages to spend.
 Female warehouse workers at the factory of Charles Macintosh and Sons Ltd in
Manchester, 1918

In addition, many munitions girls suffered ill health from the chemicals with which they
worked. They were often nicknamed ‘canaries’ because of their yellow skin, caused by
exposure to TNT. Around 400 women died from overexposure to TNT during World War
One. By mid 1917, it is estimated that women produced around eighty per cent of all
munitions.

Another area where large numbers of women were employed was transport. Women
worked as conductresses (and occasionally drivers) on buses, trams and underground
trains.
 London General Omnibus Company bus conductress, 1918

Between 1914 and 1918, an estimated two million women took on jobs which had been
previously been filled by men, an increase from 24 per cent of women in employment in
July 1914 to 37 per cent by November 1918.

The war undoubtedly led to the social advancement of women and also to the political
reward of the vote being granted to women in the UK in 1918. Through their war work,
women in Britain were beginning to overcome prejudice and break down social taboos.


Flora Sandes
Flora Sandes was an extraordinary woman. She was the only British woman to fight on the front line
in World War One…

read more
 Humanities › History & Culture

Women in World War I: Societal Impacts

Societal Impacts on Women of the "War to End All Wars"
o
o

World War I's impact on women's roles in society was immense. Women were
conscripted to fill empty jobs left behind by the male servicemen, and as such,
they were both idealized as symbols of the home front under attack and viewed
with suspicion as their temporary freedom made them "open to moral decay."

Even if the jobs they held during the war were taken away from the women after
demobilization, during the years between 1914 and 1918, women learned skills
and independence, and, in most Allied countries, gained the vote within a few
years of the war's end. The role of women in the First World War has become the
focus of many devoted historians in the past few decades, especially as it relates
to their social progress in the years that followed.

Women’s Reactions to World War I

Women, like men, were divided in their reactions to war, with some championing
the cause and others worried by it. Some, like the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and the Women's Social and Political Union
(WSPU), simply put political activity largely on hold for the duration of the war.
In 1915, the WSPU held its only demonstration, demanding that women be given
a "right to serve."

Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel eventually turned

to recruiting soldiers for the war effort, and their actions echoed across Europe.
Many women and suffragette groups who spoke out against the war faced
suspicion and imprisonment, even in countries supposedly guaranteeing free
speech, but Christabel's sister Sylvia Pankhurst, who had been arrested for
suffrage protests, remained opposed to the war and refused to help, as did other
suffrage groups.

In Germany, socialist thinker and later revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg was

imprisoned for much of the war because of her opposition to it, and In 1915, an
international meeting of antiwar women met in Holland, campaigning for a
negotiated peace; the European press reacted with scorn.

The U.S. women, too, took part in the Holland meeting, and by the time the
United States entered the War in 1917, they had already begun organizing into
clubs like the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC) and the National
Association of Colored Women (NACW), hoping to give themselves stronger
voices in the politics of the day.

American women already had the right to vote in several states by 1917, but the
federal suffrage movement continued throughout the war, and just a few years
later in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving
women the right to vote across America.

Women and Employment

The execution of “total war” across Europe demanded the mobilization of entire
nations. When millions of men were sent into the military, the drain on the labor
pool created a need for new workers, a need that only women could fill. Suddenly,
women were able to break into jobs in truly significant numbers, some of which
were ones they had previously been frozen out of, like heavy industry, munitions,
and police work.

This opportunity was recognized as temporary during the war and not sustained
when the war came to a close. Women were frequently forced out of jobs that
were given to returning soldiers, and the wages women had been paid were
always lower than those of men.

Even before the War, women in the United States were becoming more vocal
about their right to be an equal part of the workforce, and in 1903, the National
Women's Trade Union League was founded to help protect women workers.
During the War, though, women in the States were given positions generally
reserved for men and entered into clerical positions, sales, and garment and
textile factories for the first time.

Women and Propaganda

Images of women were used in propaganda beginning early in the war. Posters
(and later cinema) were vital tools for the state to promote a vision of the war as
one in which soldiers were shown defending women, children, and their
homeland. British and French reports of the German “Rape of Belgium” included
descriptions of mass executions and burning of cities, casting Belgian women in
the role of defenseless victims, needing to be saved and avenged. One poster used
in Ireland featured a woman standing with a rifle in front of a burning Belgium
with the heading “Will you go or must I?”

Women were often presented on recruiting posters applying moral and sexual
pressure on men to join up or else be diminished. Britain’s "white feather
campaigns" encouraged women to give feathers as symbols of cowardice to
nonuniformed men. These actions and women’s involvement as recruiters for the
armed forces were tools designed to “persuade” men into the armed forces.

Furthermore, some posters presented young and sexually attractive women as

rewards for soldiers doing their patriotic duty. For instance, the U.S. Navy's "I
Want You" poster by Howard Chandler Christy, which implies that the girl in the
image wants the soldier for herself (even though the poster says "...for the Navy."

Women were also the targets of propaganda. At the start of the war, posters
encouraged them to remain calm, content, and proud while their menfolk went
off to fight; later the posters demanded the same obedience that was expected of
men to do what was necessary to support the nation. Women also became a
representation of the nation: Britain and France had characters known as
Britannia and Marianne, respectively, tall, beautiful, and strong goddesses as
political shorthand for the countries now at war.

Women in the Armed Forces and the Front Line

Few women served on the front lines fighting, but there were exceptions. Flora
Sandes was a British woman who fought with Serbian forces, attaining the rank
of captain by the war’s end, and Ecaterina Teodoroiu fought in the Romanian
army. There are stories of women fighting in the Russian army throughout the
war, and after the February Revolution of 1917, an all-female unit was formed
with government support: the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. While there
were several battalions, only one actively fought in the war and captured enemy
soldiers.

Armed combat was typically restricted to men, but women were near and
sometimes on the front lines, acting as nurses caring for the considerable number
of wounded, or as drivers, particularly of ambulances. While Russian nurses were
supposed to have been kept away from the battlefront, a significant number died
from enemy fire, as did nurses of all nationalities.

In the United States, women were allowed to serve in military hospitals

domestically and abroad and were even able to enlist to work in clerical positions
in the United States to free up men to go to the front. Over 21,000 female Army
nurses and 1,400 Navy nurses served during World War I for the United States,
and over 13,000 were enlisted to work on active duty with the same rank,
responsibility, and pay as men who were sent off to war.

Noncombatant Military Roles

The role of women in nursing didn’t break as many boundaries as in other
professions. There was still a general feeling that nurses were subservient to
doctors, playing out the era’s perceived gender roles. But nursing did see major
growth in numbers, and many women from lower classes were able to receive a
medical education, albeit a quick one, and contribute to the war effort. These
nurses saw the horrors of war firsthand and were able to return to their normal
lives with that information and skill set.

Women also worked in noncombatant roles in several militaries, filling

administrative positions and allowing more men to go to the front lines. In
Britain, where women were largely refused training with weapons, 80,000 of
them served in the three armed forces (Army, Navy, Air) in forms such as the
Women’s Royal Air Force Service.

In the U.S., over 30,000 women worked in the military, mostly in nursing corps,
U.S. Army Signal Corps, and as naval and marine yeomen. Women also held a
vast variety of positions supporting the French military, but the government
refused to recognize their contribution as military service. Women also played
leading roles in many volunteer groups.
The Tensions of War
One impact of war not typically discussed is the emotional cost of loss and worry
felt by the tens of millions of women who saw family members, men and women
both, travel abroad to fight and get close to the combat. By the war’s close in 1918,
France had 600,000 war widows, Germany half a million.

During the war, women also came under suspicion from more conservative
elements of society and government. Women who took new jobs also had more
freedom and were thought to be prey to moral decay since they lacked a male
presence to sustain them. Women were accused of drinking and smoking more
and in public, premarital or adulterous sex, and the use of “male” language and
more provocative dress. Governments were paranoid about the spread of
venereal disease, which they feared would undermine the troops. Targeted media
campaigns accused women of being the cause of such spreads in blunt terms.
While men were only subjected to media campaigns about avoiding “immorality,”
in Britain, Regulation 40D of the Defence of the Realm Act made it illegal for a
woman with a venereal disease to have, or try to have, sex with a soldier; a small
number of women were actually imprisoned as a result.

Many women were refugees who fled ahead of invading armies, or who remained
in their homes and found themselves in occupied territories, where they almost
always suffered reduced living conditions. Germany may not have used much
formalized female labor, but they did force occupied men and women into
laboring jobs as the war progressed. In France the fear of German soldiers raping
French women—and rapes did occur—stimulated an argument over loosening
abortion laws to deal with any resultant offspring; in the end, no action was
taken.

Postwar Effects and the Vote

As a result of the war, in general, and depending on class, nation, color, and age,
European women gained new social and economic options, and stronger political
voices, even if they were still viewed by most governments as mothers first.

Perhaps the most famous consequence of wider women’s employment and

involvement in World War I in the popular imagination as well as in history
books is the widening enfranchisement of women as a direct result of recognizing
their wartime contribution. This is most apparent in Britain, where, in 1918 the
vote was given to property-owning women over the age of 30, the year the war
ended, and Women in Germany got the vote shortly after the war. All the newly
created central and eastern European nations gave women the vote except
Yugoslavia, and of the major Allied nations only France did not extend the right
to vote to women before World War II.

Clearly, the wartime role of women advanced their cause to a great extent. That
and the pressure exerted by suffrage groups had a major effect on politicians, as
did a fear that millions of empowered women would all subscribe to the more
militant branch of women’s rights if ignored. As Millicent Fawcett, leader of the
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, said of World War I and women,
"It found them serfs and left them free."

The Larger Picture

In her 1999 book "An Intimate History of Killing," historian Joanna Bourke has a
more jaded view of British societal changes. In 1917 it became apparent to the
British government that a change in the laws governing elections was needed: the
law, as it stood, only allowed men who had been resident in England for the
previous 12 months to vote, ruling out a large group of soldiers. This wasn’t
acceptable, so the law had to be changed; in this atmosphere of rewriting,
Millicent Fawcett and other suffrage leaders were able to apply their pressure and
have some women brought into the system.

Women under 30, whom Bourke identifies as having taken much of the wartime
employment, still had to wait longer for the vote. By contrast, in Germany
wartime conditions are often described as having helped radicalize women, as
they took roles in food riots which turned into broader demonstrations,
contributing to the political upheavals that occurred at the end and after the war,
leading to a German republic.

An Overview of Women Entering the Workforce During WW1

Women and the Military: Serving the War Effort in World War II

Canadian World War II Posters Gallery



How World War I Changed the U.S. Economy for Good

How Did World War II Affect Women?

How Did the Nazis Treat Women?

Biography of Emmeline Pankhurst, Women's Rights Activist

Women's Right to Vote: What Won the Final Battle?

Who Were the Doughboys Nicknamed During World War I?

Key Historical Figures of World War I

Discover Your American WWI Ancestors

 

Why Were Trenches Used in World War I Warfare?

Female Spies in World War I and World War II

What Everyone Should Know About World War I

Tokyo Rose - Women Spies on Japanese Radio

Was World War I Actually a 'World' War?

Home
Learn Something New Every Day
Email AddressSIGN UP
Follow Us
 Facebook
 Flipboard

 Science, Tech, Math

 Humanities
 Languages
 Resources

 About Us
 Advertise
 Privacy Policy
 Cookie Policy
 Careers
 Editorial Guidelines
 Contact
 Terms of Use
ThoughtCo is part of the Dotdash publishing family.

 Verywell Family
 Verywell Mind
 The Balance
 Lifewire
 and more

UPDATED ON
AUG 21, 2018

American Women in World War

II
1. “Rosie the Riveter”
During World War II, some 350,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces,
both at home and abroad. They included the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots,
who on March 10, 2010, were awarded the prestigious Congressional Gold
Medal. Meanwhile, widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the
industrial labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the
U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945
nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

Women in the Armed Forces

In addition to factory work and other home front jobs, some 350,000 women
joined the Armed Services, serving at home and abroad. At the urging of First
Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and women’s groups, and impressed by the British
use of women in service, General George Marshall supported the idea of
introducing a women’s service branch into the Army. In May 1942, Congress
instituted the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, later upgraded to the Women’s
Army Corps, which had full military status. Its members, known as WACs,
worked in more than 200 non-combatant jobs stateside and in every theater of
the war. By 1945, there were more than 100,000 WACs and 6,000 female
officers. In the Navy, members of Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency
Service (WAVES) held the same status as naval reservists and provided
support stateside. The Coast Guard and Marine Corps soon followed suit,
though in smaller numbers.

Did you know? On March 10, 2010, nearly 70 years after they were
disbanded, the Women Airforce Service Pilots received the Congressional
Gold Medal.
One of the lesser-known roles women played in the war effort was provided
by the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs. These women, each of
whom had already obtained their pilot’s license prior to service, became the
first women to fly American military aircraft. They ferried planes from factories
to bases, transporting cargo and participating in simulation strafing and target
missions, accumulating more than 60 million miles in flight distances and
freeing thousands of male U.S. pilots for active duty in World War II. More
than 1,000 WASPs served, and 38 of them lost their lives during the war.
Considered civil service employees and without official military status, these
fallen WASPs were granted no military honors or benefits, and it wasn’t until
1977 that the WASPs received full military status. On March 10, 2010, at a
ceremony in the Capitol, the WASPS received the Congressional Gold Medal,
one of the highest civilian honors. More than 200 former pilots attended the
event, many wearing their World War II-era uniforms.

“Rosie the Riveter”

While women worked in a variety of positions previously closed to them, the
aviation industry saw the greatest increase in female workers. More than
310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943, representing 65
percent of the industry’s total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-
war years). The munitions industry also heavily recruited women workers, as
represented by the U.S. government’s “Rosie the Riveter” propaganda
campaign. Based in small part on a real-life munitions worker, but primarily a
fictitious character, the strong, bandanna-clad Rosie became one of the most
successful recruitment tools in American history, and the most iconic image of
working women during World War II.

In movies, newspapers, posters, photographs, articles and even a Norman

Rockwell-painted Saturday Evening Post cover, the Rosie the
Riveter campaign stressed the patriotic need for women to enter the work
force—and they did, in huge numbers. Though women were crucial to the war
effort, their pay continued to lag far behind their male counterparts: Female
workers rarely earned more than 50 percent of male wages.

How War Changed the Role of Women in the United States

by
Joyce Bryant

To Guide Entry

Introduction
This unit is designed for seventh and eighth grade reading and history classes. Its
focus is on the role of women and their changes during World War I and World War
II. Its purpose is to increase students’ knowledge and understanding of World War I
and II. It will provide an introduction to students who may be interested in a career in
the military service and understanding the effects of war.

It can be taught in part or can be ongoing throughout the school year. It will be taught
to seventh and eighth grade middle school students. It can also be taught to students
on a high school level especially those interested in a career in the military. This unit’s
focus is on World War I, World War II and the causes and the role changes of women
in the United States.

War tears families apart. Factual accounts and information will lead the learner to ask
many questions, such as: what causes war and what are some of the dilemmas of war
and how does the family solve their problems during war times.

The goals and objectives of this unit are as follows: to use World War I and World
War II as a means to teach some history and skills, to improve students’ achievement
in scientific concepts, reading comprehension, vocabulary and critical thinking skills.
Also, I hope that students will grow socially, emotionally and intellectually. My
objective is for students to learn their self worth and empowerment to be able to deal
with the loss of a brother, friend, or father due to war.

Women In The 1800’s

Women were always an integral part of any and are permanent parts of all movements
and settlements. In early America, a woman’s life tended to center around farm and
family. For the most part labor was observed, whereby, men did the outside work such
as planting and harvesting the crops while the women worked inside the house,
transforming the raw products into usable commodities. All of a woman’s work
comes under the general heading of housewife and it varied from region to region.
Despite variations, the activities were much the same throughout the different regions.
First came supervision of the house. Women swept, scrubbed, polished, made their
own brooms, soap and polish. They carried water, made starch, ironed, carried
firewood, built fires, and made candles. They sewed and made everything and they
were usually in charge of the family bookkeeping. They also worked outside the
house.
Women kept their own gardens and every fall canned and preserved vast amounts of
homegrown fruits and vegetables. They ran home bakeries and dairies, did the
milking, made butter, and kept the hen yard. Women performed usually jobs held by
men. They were blacksmiths, silversmiths, and sail makers, tailors, painters, and
wheelwrights and shopkeepers of every sort. Many women practiced medicine. They
became nurses, unlicensed physicians and midwives. The kind of doctoring they did at
home caring for the well being of their families extended outside the home.

Many women worked side by side with their spouses without being given any power
or able to share in the political power with men. Most women simply accepted the
division of political labor and their role as women, being described as their husbands
“better half.” Family membership had always been women’s most important
affiliation. In the past it had been an affiliation women shared with men. The
significance of the family as a primary economic unit was maintained throughout the
1800’s for the majority of Americans who continued to live on farms. Among the new
emerging middle class, however, such was not the case. For the new middle class
home and family was seen as separate from the world of work and money. The middle
class women continued to perform their traditional work but it was no longer
considered real work, because unlike men, they earned no money. Cut off from the
money economy, women might labor all day, producing all sorts of goods and service
vital to the well being of the family and yet in the eyes of the world they did not work.
When World War II broke out and the United States entered things changed for
women as they did during World War I.

World War I Experience

During World War I the rapidly expanding war industries dipped heavily into the
labor force of women. In 1918 nearly three million new women workers were
employed in food, textile and war industries. Many taboos and restrictions thrown up
to keep women out of large-scale productions industry were broken down. Women
worked as streetcar conductors, radio operators, and in steel mills and logging camps
during the war. Women roles began to change rapidly because of the war. Not only
did women maintain their households, but also they played the roles of helping to
support the war. One of the women’s major contributions to the war effort was to take
over the running of the farms and grow much needed food. Women worked long
hours providing the support that was needed. They learned many new skills and as a
result their roles continued to change. During World War I the labor forced of women
expanded to almost three million. They were employed in food, textile and war
industries. About twenty thousand women worked for the military. Women and girls
washed the clothing of the officers and soldiers. They sewed and knitted coats,
underwear, and socks. This was important because the army did not have resources
for new uniforms. The women and girls cooked for the soldiers, nursed the wounded
and sick and helped them survive their injuries and their sickness. Exploring
American History: p. 533.

As men went off to war women took on more responsibilities. Factories that had
produced merchandise such as coats, suits, and other garments began to make
uniforms for the soldiers. Carmakers made tanks and military trucks. Women took
over the production lines in factories. They also replaced men as police officers,
mechanics, train conductors and even barbers. It is believed that women became
soldiers in the American Armies. They dressed in men’s clothing and pretended to be
men.

The war tore families apart, forcing women to take on new roles. During the war they
needed to replace men who had left for the battlefield. They worked long hours in
factories making guns and ammunition, some worked in government jobs as clerks
and managers. Women learned many new skills. They were becoming independent
without their knowledge or their spouse’s knowledge. The wars made many positive
and negative changes in all facets of society. For almost three years America tried to
remain neutral, but were unable to do so.

World War I began in 1914 and America entered the war in 1917 and that caused a
labor shortage among men and women who had to and did take over. First, the
government had the task of raising troops and gathering supplies. Then they had to
produce the food, uniforms, and weapons to equip the forces and to re-supply the
allies in Europe. Next the government had to retool the industry to produce war
material and find people to man the machines. Factories that had made coats began to
make uniforms. Carmakers made military trucks and tanks. As men left their jobs for
the military service, women replaced them. They took over the productions lines in
factories. Women served in the First World War in a number of ways. The armed
forces accepted women into non-combat roles, supporting troops as nurses, cooks and
administrative assistants. Organizations, such as YMCA, Red Cross, and the Salvation
Army sent women to Europe to help the service men. Professional women such as
doctors were few and had a tough time being taken seriously. Doctor Mary Crawford
a female physician forged her own pass to service in World War I. Women who
served in the military during World War I did not find it easy. All citizens were urged
to conserve because so much was needed to support the war effort. These changing
roles were all very new to the women.

Women At War With America: pp. 20-21.

America’s women were at work everywhere during World War I. They labored on the
home front and overseas. They took jobs on the nation’s farms in factories, and in
shipyards, and served in its military forces. Approximately a million women filled the
vacancies left by the men who were now in uniform. Many were young girl’s who had
previously worked in local shops and department stores or who had never worked
before. Many were wives who had once worked, but had left their jobs to raise
families.

Women on the farms were nicknamed “farmerettes” by the press. In the factories and
shipyards, they served mainly as clerks, secretaries, typists, and bookkeepers. World
War I also marked an important “first” for American women. For the first time in the
nation’s history, women were permitted to join the armed forces. Some 13,000,
known as “Yeomanettes,” enlisted in the navy to do clerical work stateside. Nearly
300 entered the Marine Corps as clerks and won the name “Marinettes.” More than
230 women traveled to France as part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. There, they
served as telephone operators for the American Expeditionary force.

World War I: p. 32 and 48.

But they were not the only ones to travel overseas. Some 11,000 women, although not
actual members of the armed forces, served abroad as nurses; others became
ambulance drivers. Women were also among the 6,000 Red Cross workers who sailed
to France.

About 3,500 women served in the cafeterias and recreation facilities that the Young
Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) operated in England, France, and Russia.
Members of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) also provided
service for woman overseas and at home. More than fifty women of the Society of
Friends tended wounded soldiers on the western front and helped to feed and clothe
civilians who lost their homes in the fighting.

World War I: p. 63-64

Two groups of American women also served on the western front before the United
States entered the war. One group was made up of the wives and daughters of
American diplomats who were stationed in Europe at the time the fighting erupted in
1914. They tended to the needs of families left homeless by the fighting. The other
was a unit of ambulance drivers formed by women living in France.

Like the men the 25,000 American women who served overseas risked death, disease,
and injury. An estimated 348 lost their lives. Some were killed in air raids and
artillery bombardments. Others died or were left debilitated by the diseases and
disorders bred by the filthy and worse-than-primitive conditions along the western
front.

The exact number of women who were injured is unknown. There are individual
stories, however, that leave no doubt as to the seriousness of some of the injuries.
When a hand grenade accidentally exploded near a writer and Red Cross worker they
sustained wounds that kept them hospitalized for two years. A women doctor caught
in a gas attack suffered burned lungs. A study conducted in the 1920’s revealed that,
among the women injured in the war, at least 200 were permanently disabled.

A group of women known as the Hello Girls were the telephone switchboard and
operators of United States Army Signal Corps and they supported communications
among, General Perishing troops and with other allied forces in France. A small group
of women, bilingual took on the duty of running the telephone switchboard for the
American Expeditionary force coping with operators of the French telephone system,
who rarely spoke English. Women actors, singers, musicians, and entertainers traveled
to the front line to provide some moments of pleasure to soldiers during their allotted
rest periods.

World War II

After World War I some women returned to the place society had destined for them
while others refused. They had learned new skills and was prepared to use them. The
United States entered the World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and women
power again was in demand. Their roles continued to change tremendously. By the
spring of 1942 there was a growing manpower shortage in the military. In American
Wars prior to World War II, there had been a debate about and opposition to using
women in the armed forces. As men went off to battle, women were needed for non-
combat jobs such as switchboard operators, telegraphers, mechanics, and drivers.
During World War II, more than one hundred thousand women served in the women’s
Army Corps later became known as the Women’s Army Corps. Women also joined
the United States Navy. During the fall of 1942, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Squadron
became known as the Women’s Air Force, began training women pilots who flew
planes to various military bases in the United States. They tested aircraft and
performed other non-combat flight duties. Many women believed that they might
never be allowed to serve in the military again if they did not prove to be capable in a
chosen role.

Women at War with America: pp.20-21.

During World War II, so many men were sent off to war, and so much new production
was needed to support that war effort that there was a gross shortage of manpower to
staff factories and manufacturing plants. As a result, propaganda was distributed
thorough print, film and radio to encourage women to take over their jobs for the
duration of the war. There was a catch. When the war was over, the women were
supposed to give the jobs right back but some women resisted because there was a
need to continue working.

Rosie the Riveter was the name given to the women depicted on many of the
propaganda posters. In the most famous one, she is wearing a red and white bandana
to cover her hair, and she has rolled back the sleeve of her blue coverall to expose a
flexed bicep. The expression on her face was confident and determined. The caption
above her head reads, “We Can Do It!”

Women who had been employed in fields predominated by women-pink collar

secretarial positions, domestic jobs and lower paying industrial positions were eager
to try their hands at the new opportunities. Soon they were successfully doing things
only men had done before. Women became taxi and streetcar drivers, operated heavy
construction machinery, worked in lumber and steel mills, unloaded freight, built
dirigibles, made munitions and much more. Men’s jobs always paid more, and this
was women’s only chance to step up and earn more. “Do the job he left behind” said a
lot. Women could do it as long as men didn’t want it or wasn’t around to do it.

Before the war, men, who were then considered the breadwinners and heads of’ the
household, held most of the jobs in the factories. When some sixteen million males
enlisted or were drafted into the military, employer’s recruited women to fill the roles
on the assembly lines of what were referred to, as essential industry opportunities. The
field of science, once dominated by males was opened up for women.

Many women began working outside the home for the first time. Media propaganda
urged American women to get a job that would help in winning the war. Over six
million entered the work force during the war making them one third of the labor
force and this number increased as the war escalated. Millions worked six days a
week, forty-eight hours a week. Over four hundred thousand women left their
domestic jobs and went to work in war industries. Eighteen million women were in
the work force during World War II. Women learned the new industries quickly from
a marginal to a basic labor supply for munitions making them classified.

Women At War With America: pp.241-243.

One of the women named Rosie the Riveter was strong, serious, and competent. She
symbolizes the vital importance of women workers to the defense position. As the
supply of experienced male pilots began to dwindle, Nancy Love a woman pilot
proposed the recruitment of the most qualified women pilots in the nation to assist the
air transport command as civilian’s employees. Love’s proposal was adopted in the
summer of 1942 and 25 female pilots were recruited to become members of the
WAAF’s, with Nancy Love as commander. Each of the women had more than 1,000
hours of flying time and they quickly proved capable of the kind of duties for which
they had been envisioned. Originally assigned to fly single-engine airplanes, the
women demonstrated that they could handle fast pursuit ships as well as the four
engine bombers on the transcontinental ferry flights. Eventually as many as 303
women pilots were on duty with the Ferrying Division, but the numbers dropped to an
average of 140.

Women At War With America: pp. 73-79.

While Nancy Love’s pilots were highly experienced women, Jackie Cochran had
another idea in mine. Jackie used her influence with Eleanor Roosevelt to convince
the War Department to create the Women’s Flying Training Department, a program to
train young women as pilots with her as director of the program. Consequently, the
military found itself with two programs using female pilots, one a valuable asset that
took advantage of the skills of experienced women who could make a significant
contribution from the outset and the other a politically motivated program requiring
extensive training. General Arnold called a meeting of officials from ATC and
Cochran and told them there was not room for two programs; they would have to get
together. Cochran’s political connections held sway, and her plan was adopted.
Cochran also used her political influence to gain control of the program. In August
1943 the programs were merged to become the Women Air force Service Pilots, with
Cochran as Director, of women pilots.

Women could relieve male pilots for combat duty in 1942-43, when the war was still
going against the Allies and the War Department believe there would be heavy
casualties among the male pilots who went to war. As many of the women trainers
demonstrated superior abilities, General Arnold directed that training in heavier and
more difficult airplanes could be initiated to the maximum extent possible. In 1942
General Arnold wrote that the Air force’s objective was to replace as many male
pilots in non-combat flying duty as was feasible. Cochran’s training programming did
not lack applicants. Advertisements over-glamorized the program, leading to a flood
of applicants of more than 25,000 women applied for training. Only 1830 were
admitted of which 1,074 completed the training and were assigned to operational duty.
The training program began initially at Hughes Airport in Houston, Texas, but moved
to Sweetwater, Texas due to lack of facilities. In the first months of the program,
when training standards were relaxed, the washout rate among women was 26% but
increased to 47% in 1944, when the lessened needed for pilots allowed more stringent
requirements. Still the comparison to men was favorable as the washout rate for men
went from less than 25% to more than 55% over the same period.
Women At War With America: p. 242.

The glamorization, of the WASPS was to a large extent responsible for their ultimate
demise. The women were in civilian status and were thus denied the military benefits
of the male pilots who had accepted commissions as service pilots. A bill was
submitted in Congress in 1943 to militarize the WASP. Cochran and General Arnold
proposed the creation of a separate organization of female pilots headed by a woman
with the rank of colonel, but the War Department opposed such a move. The USAAF
felt that the women should be commissioned with the Air WAC’s who were already
members of the military, many of whom were serving overseas in combat theaters.
While Congress was still considering the bill, the Civil Aeronautics Agency’s War
Training Service program came to an end in January, 1944 while college training
programs and civilian-contract flying schools were scheduled to close, thus freeing
large numbers of previously draft-exempt male flight instructors for military duty.

World War II: pp. 27-30, 144 and 180.

The grounding of so many well-qualified male pilots and their possible assignment to
ground combat duties led to a feeling of indignation against the women pilots who
were seeking military status. Simultaneously as the war began to turn in the allies
favor, large numbers of returning combat pilots were available for ferrying, training,
and other duties then filled by WASP pilots. In June, 1944 a Congressional
Committee On Civil Service matters reported that the WASP program was
unnecessary and unjustifiably expensive. The committee recommended that the
recruitment and training of inexperienced women pilots be halted. The final, class of
female pilots was allowed to graduate from Sweetwater on December 20, 1944, but
with their graduation the entire program was halted.

In addition to their role with the flying division, women were also used in Training
Command and the domestic numbered Air Forces. In the summer of 1943 some
women were assigned to target-towing duty training antiaircraft gunners. The women
were judged better in the mission than returning combat pilots. In the Troop Carrier
Command some women ‘were assigned to fly tractors for glider practice. This was
one area in which women proved in-equal to the task due to the physical strength
required to fly the Lockheed C-60’s that were serving as tractors. Some women were
trained as instructors while they were not assigned to basic-flight instruction and they
served quite well, in the instrument phase of training. In, the inaction of the program.
WASP pilots had suffered 37 deaths while seven women received major injuries and
29 other minor injuries while on the job.

While the WASPS were in civilian status, large numbers of women served with the
Untied States Army Air Forces in World War II with full military status. The one
group of women who shared the same dangers as did male air crew members were the
female flight nurses who flew with troop carrier squadrons in all of the combat
theaters. By 1944, more than 6,500 nurses were on duty with the USAAF, of which
500 were in Louisville, Kentucky for an extremely strenuous eight-week course.
During the course the women learned how to load and un-load patients onto a
transport as well as military training including survival skills, the use of parachutes,
and simulated combat since the women would be required to fly into combat areas.

Upon completion of their training, the women were assigned to air evacuation units
overseas, where they flew as crew members aboard troop carrier C-47s operating into
airfields on battlefields and everywhere from New Guinea to Sicily, and later on the
European continent. The use of flight nurses exposed women to combat dangers that
had probably never had experienced women as a group. Their skill and diligence
saved the lives of hundreds of wounded soldier’s who would have died on the
battlefield in previous wars.

During World War II there were many hardships throughout the countries. The tolls of
the war were hitting hard and many more soldiers were needed in battle. As the men
went off to fight in the war, problems arose due to lack of people in the work force at
home. Times were very hard and money was tight. The women were not able to
perform the typical household duties, there was to much outside the home to do in
order to survive.

The factory jobs held very little pay. The factories ranged from all sorts of parts for
war vehicles and weapons, to radio parts and candles for light. Even things as simple
as candles were of dire importance during these trying times.

The women work very long hours but were proud to be able to help out with the war
in as many ways as possible. This was an opportunity for women to grow and learn
the job skills that they were never allowed to do. The war created employment for
women liberating them, while changing their traditional roles.

Problems surface with the introduction of women workers, who’s growing influence
threatened the men workers still in the United States. They responded with harassment
and discrimination, which remained a problem even after the war was over. Even
though women outnumbered the men in the labor force three to one they still had
problems with the new idea of women as wage laborers. The war had allowed women
to get “out of hand” or “out of the house”. The liberated woman might be
undermining the traditional marriage and family life. Some women started working as
young as fourteen or fifteen but were pleased with the new opportunities to use their
hands and skills. Rosie the Riveter was the poster of encouragement for women to
join the workforce during the women’s industry movement. The poster showed
women’s hidden strengths, promoting power and pride.

Women at War With America: p. 108.

The women that volunteered in factory jobs worked in welding, machining, building
aircraft’s, repairing tank’s, and armament factories, jobs once held by men who were
called away to fight in the war. Over six million women took over in these fields for
the men. In 1944, the average woman’s salary was $31.21 a week for her labors, even
though the men that still remained made $54.65 a week. The women wore overalls,
uniforms, slacks, and bandanas or snoods to cover their hair. These clothes were
considered very unfeminine, but the women got used to them and continued to wear
them in public.

Women at War With America: p.247.

The greatest effect war has on the people involved is change. In wartime, change
occurs, not only in global or national collective consciousness but, in many of the
individuals involved. World War II brought about many different thoughts and ideas
within the United States. Not everyone who participated in the war stood on the front
line with the risk of being shot, but nonetheless, they were all willing to take their own
risks to support each other in battle.

One of the most incredible changes within the United States that occurred during
wartime was change in identity. World War II enabled people to learn about each
other and themselves. People of different cultures, backgrounds, ages, and especially
genders, who experienced massive changes in their lives; changes that would continue
in their hearts long after the end of the war. This was the birth of many new identities
that America had not yet seen.

War, for many women, was about gaining strength and mobility. As more and more
men left to fight in battle, women started taking over traditionally male
responsibilities. As far back as history can tell, women have been limited in mobility
and set in particular spaces by society, but war changed all the rules. War very much
became a doorway through which women ventured out of the home where they had
been confined. During World War II, women in high numbers were asked to work
outside as well as inside of the home. For many women, World War II became a
symbol of freedom. It was a time where women were no longer forced into the roles
society had created for them.

Women were quoted to have better motor skills than men, which was said to be from
the common practice of needle work so they were useful with wire fuses on bombs
and to fill metal casings with gunpowder. Many accidents came out of the factories.
Over 210,000 women were permanently disabled and at least 37,000 lost their lives.

The women factory workers fought their own battles during the war. They struggled
with new horizons, social discrimination, gender harassment, and physical pain from
long hours and poor working conditions. The women were very important during the
war in keeping the home countries in line and allowing the men to leave by taking
over their jobs. The cord was cut after WWII for many women, they obtained many
new skills and they were born into a new world. Even though many women went back
to being homemakers after the war was over, times would never be the same again.

Initially, doubts and hesitations arose about whether or not women could work within
a combat situation. It was during the battles of World War II that women faced the
greatest challenge of trying to gain recognition and serve their country in more ways
than they had in previous years. Little did they know, their efforts would prove to be
victorious, and they would leave an everlasting mark on American society. Women
had demonstrated amazing work and courage during World War I and World War II.

After the two wars women became free to create their own lives and senses of self.
With this increase in freedom also came an increase in equality. World War II gave
women the chance to prove they are just as capable as men. As World War II
continued, greater numbers of women began to take control. For the first time, women
in the United States were learning to work as factory workers, nurses, and journalists.
Many women even joined the army through an organization called the Women’s
Army Corps. World War II also brought about an increase in women as subjects of
propaganda. Women worked as drivers, farmers, mail delivery personnel, garbage
collectors, builders, and mechanics.

Life for women was changing. Women had their own money and could do with it
what they pleased. They became more independent. “War taught them how to stand
on their on two feet. Though relatively short-lived, World War II provided a way for
women to do what they wanted. Far fewer obstacles stood in the way of women
proving that they were extremely capable. Women are capable of everything its too
bad it took a war to make everyone see it.

Women in World War I

Women have long been involved in the military during times of war, though not always
in a capacity that we might recognize as “traditionally” military. For centuries women
have followed armies, many of them soldiers’ wives, providing indispensable services
such as cooking, nursing, and laundry—in fact, “armies could not have functioned as
well, perhaps could not have functioned at all, without the service of women.” 1
With the onset of World War I, women took on these same roles and newer ones, but
their service during this conflict was significantly different from that of earlier
wars. Thousands of women in the United States formed and/or joined organizations
that worked to bring relief to the war-torn countries in Europe, even before official
American entry into the war in April 1917. After the United States joined the Allies,
women continued to join these organizations and dedicate themselves to supporting
and expanding the war effort. These groups were highly organized, much like the
military, which helped women garner respect from their fellow citizens and have their
patriotic endeavors taken seriously.

Aside from their mass involvement in these voluntary organizations and efforts, a key
difference between women’s service during World War I and that of previous wars was
the class of women involved. Typically women who followed armies were from the
working classes of society, but during the Great War, women from all classes served in
many different capacities. Upper class women were the primary founders and members
of voluntary wartime organizations, particularly because they could afford to devote so
much of their time and money to these efforts. Middle- and lower-class women also
participated in these organizations and drives, although they were more likely to be
serving as nurses with the military or replacing men in their jobs on the home front as
the men went off to war. For the first time in American history, women from every part
of the class spectrum were serving in the war in some capacity.

Another significant change to women’s service during the Great War is that American
civilian women donned uniforms. The uniforms allowed women to look the part and
claim credibility for their services, as well as to be taken seriously by others; many
women saw their wartime service as a way to claim full citizenship, and the uniforms
symbolized “their credentials as citizens engaged in wartime service.” 2
Other women donned uniforms because of their association with the military—World
War I was the first time in American history in which women were officially attached to
arms of the American military and government agencies. Yeomen (F) served with the
Navy and the Marine Corps, while the Army Nurse Corps was attached to the Army. In
France, 223 American women popularly known as “Hello Girls” served as long-distance
switchboard operators for the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

World War I was without a doubt a watershed event for women’s military service in the
United States and elsewhere. However, we do not want to restrict our definition of
women in the military to only women who served in the military. Instead, we want to
broaden our understanding to include the women whose lives were affected by the
military and the war: women who were left on the home front, women who saw their
husbands and sons go off to fight, women in Europe who experienced the war firsthand
as it ravaged their hometowns, and even the women in media and art who symbolically
represented freedom, virtue, and victory and spurred their countrymen and women to
arms. Therefore, the following sections of this object group showcase items from
across the Smithsonian and across the entire spectrum of women’s experiences in
World War I.
The sections in this object group do not progress chronologically. Instead, they are
arranged by collection type and subject matter. The latter sections of this object group
highlight resources related to women in World War I that are held by other Smithsonian
museums and archives.

Forgotten history: The

role of women in war
times
The word “soldier” may bring to mind a man in uniform but it actually refers to
anyone serving in the military, including women.

In recent years, the number of women in the military has steadily increased to
more than 200,000, which is about 14.5 percent of those in active duty,
according to the Pentagon. However, women have always been part of the
war effort, whether directly or indirectly. When men went overseas to war,
women often stepped in to fill their vacancies during World War I and II.
Women have also been recognized for their medical services to wounded
soldiers since Clara Barton nursed soldiers during the Civil War.

What many do not realize is that in the past, women have also served in
combat, espionage and resistance roles. Next year marks the 100th
anniversary of WWI, which was going to be the “war to end all wars.”
As preparations are made to celebrate this event, it is fitting to also recognize
women’s contributions.

Finding lost history

When Forest Park author Kathryn Atwood was considering writing a book, she
turned to her love of history, which began in high school when she viewed
“The Hiding Place,” a 1975 film about Corrie ten Boom whose family hid Jews
in their home.

“I remember thinking about the kind of person who would have the courage to
defy authority and save lives,” says Atwood, 57. Her fascination with history
grew as her own father shared his experiences from his time serving in the
Army Air Corps during WWII.

As she recalled the historical accounts of war, she realized something was
missing. “All of the stories were only about men. I thought about looking into
stories of women. I have always been intrigued by the idea of forgotten
history. I want to remember people who have stories that aren’t being told. So
many women had their lives defined by war and no one remembers who they
were,” she explains.

She began writing about women in WWII and in 2011 published a collection of
26 stories about brave women involved in that war, “Women Heroes of World
War II.”

“Then I thought, why not do World War I with the centennial year coming up?”
she says.

She started research on the project and published “Woman Heroes of World
War I” in 2016.

No recognition
As Atwood dove into researching WWI, she discovered that women were not
always treated fairly as shown by the plight of the “Hello Girls.” The nickname
was given to more than 400 American women who were recruited to be
switchboard operators and translators overseas. The women completed Army
Signal Corps training and were sworn into the Army Signal Corps.

They followed army regulations and wore army uniforms but “they were not
considered as part of the military until 60 years later,” notes Atwood. “I was
also surprised in the intense support for the war effort during World War I from
so many women who didn’t have the right to vote, yet were still willing to put
their lives on the line,” she says.

Women in battle
Atwood explored women involved in WWI from several different countries.

“I think the most exciting story was about Maria Bochkareva who actually
fought in the trenches in Russia,” she says.

Bochkareva was first told she could not be a soldier but managed to convince
the head of the Russian armed forces to let her enter training. When Russian
soldiers’ morale was failing, she proposed forming an all-female battalion to
shame the men into returning to battle. She led the group of women into battle
and soon the women became known as the Women’s Battalion of Death for
their courage. The book chronicles her many brave exploits, which had a very
unsatisfying ending.

More than a nurse

Many of the women involved in war efforts serve in medical capacities but
some did more than simple nursing tasks. “Elsie Inglis was a surgeon who
founded mobile hospital units to treat the wounded,” says Atwood.

Inglis was a Scottish surgeon who offered her assistance during WWI but
when she approached the Edinburgh Branch of the Royal Army Medical
Corps, Atwood says that Inglis reportedly was told, “My good lady, go home
and sit still.”
Atwood learned that Inglis instead turned to other women who helped raise
funds to establish 14 mobile hospitals for wounded soldiers, which saved
many lives in France, Serbia, Romania, Russia, Malta, Corsica and
Macedonia. Her efforts are explained in the book including a defiant refusal to
a request made by the enemy, which branded her a hero to many.

Clever spies
In researching both books, Atwood discovered that since many viewed
women as not being involved in the war effort, they were able to be effective
spies and members of resistance groups.

Louise de Bettignies was a petite young French woman who ended up

delivering several crucial messages to help the WWI effort. Because she did
not appear to be a threat, she was able to move about easily. After
successfully smuggling information about a German plot to tunnel under
British trenches to plant explosives, she was considered a hero. She also
became a link for family members separated by war by inscribing their
messages in lemon juice on her petticoat. She then traveled to various places,
ironed the petticoat revealing the messages, cut it up and distributed them.
Her bravery caught the attention of British intelligence who trained her further.
Her alias was Alice Dubois and the book describes the formation of the Alice
Network, hundreds of people who helped send information using clever
methods.

In her first book, Atwood tells the story of Virginia Hall who was born in
Baltimore, Maryland, and served as a spy for the British and later for the
American Office of Strategic Services or OSS during WWII. She was fluent in
her native English but also French and German. She pretended to be an
elderly cheese peddler in France. As she sold cheese to German soldiers,
they spoke freely in front of her because they didn’t know she could
understand them. She sent reports of all that she heard via radio. She was
presented with the Distinguished Service Cross Award, the first civilian and
the only woman to be awarded this honor during WWII.