Female roles in the World Wars

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Rosie the Riveter: "We Can Do It!" - Many women first found economic strength in World War II-era manufacturing jobs.
Rosie the Riveter: "We Can Do It!" - Many women first found economic strength in World War II-era manufacturing jobs.

There is little doubt that women's work in the two World Wars of the twentieth century was an important factor in the course of both wars. This involvement changed the social status and working lives of women in many countries from that point onwards.

Womens' contribution to both wars was significant; though the attitudes towards their contribution were typically paternalistic.

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[edit] Women's role prior to World War I

Prior to the First World War women's role in society in western countries was generally confined to the domestic sphere (but not necessarily their own home) and to certain types of jobs: 'Women's Work'.

In Great Britain for example, just before World War I, out of an adult population of about 24 million women, some 1.7 million worked in domestic service, 0.8 million worked in the textile manufacturing industry, 0.6 million worked in the clothing trades, 0.5 million worked in commerce and 0.26 million in local and national government (including teaching).[1] The British textile and clothing trades, in particular, employed far more women than men and could be regarded as 'women's work'.[1]

While some women managed to receive a tertiary education and others to go into non-traditional career paths, for the most part women were expected to be primarily involved in 'home duties' and 'women's work'. Before 1914, only a few countries (New Zealand, Australia, and several Scandinavian countries) had given the right to vote to women (see Women's suffrage), and apart from these countries women were little involved in the political process.

More than any previous wars, World Wars I and II hinged as much on industrial production as they did on battlefield clashes. With millions of men away fighting and with the inevitable horrendous casualties, there was a severe shortage of labour in a range of industries, from rural and farm work to city office jobs.

During both World War I and World War II, women were called on, by necessity, to do work and to take on roles that were outside their traditional gender expectations.[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 trades.[1] Women did, for the duration of both World Wars, take on jobs that were traditionally regarded as 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 World War I.[1]

[edit] World War I

See also: Women in the First World War

Women moved into the labour force to fill this need. During World War I, for example, thousands of women worked in munitions factories, offices and large hangars used to build aircrafts.[1] Of course women were also involved in knitting socks and preparing hampers 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. Nursing became the one and only area of female contribution that involved being at the front and experiencing the horror of war.

Not only did they 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 highly capable in diverse fields of endeavour. There is little doubt that this expanded view of the role of women in society did change the outlook of what women could do and their place in the workforce. However the extent of this change is open to historical debate. Historian Yvonne McEwen has recently published her research on the role of professional nurses in 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary: British and Irish Nurses in the Great War'. In addition, as a result of painstaking cross-referencing of data provided by the War Graves Commission, the military and the media, McEwen has drawn up the first Roll of Honour of nurses who lost their lives. This is included as an appendix to her book.

The role of women tended to differ in scope and importance between World War I and World War II.

Many women worked as volunteers serving at Red Cross and encouraging the sale of bonds and the planting of "victory gardens".

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.

[edit] World War II

In many Allied countries women were encouraged to join female branches of the armed forces or participate in industrial or farm work.
In many Allied countries women were encouraged to join female branches of the armed forces or participate in industrial or farm 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 1944, more than 2.3 million women were working in the war industries in the U.S., building ships, aircraft, vehicles, and weaponry. Women also worked in factories, munitions plants and farms, and also 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 on the front lines. Thousands of others joined defensive militias at home and there was a great increase in the number of women serving in the military itself, particularly in the Red Army (see below).

This necessity to use the skills and the time of women was heightened by the nature of the war itself. While World War I was mainly fought in France and was a war arguably without clear aggressor or villain, World War II was truly a global conflict where countries were invaded or under the threat of invasion from leaders in Germany (Adolf Hitler) and Japan that had ambitions of world domination. In these circumstances the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable. The hard skilled labour of women was symbolized in the United States by the figure of Rosie the Riveter.

Many women served in the resistances of France, Italy, and Poland, and in the British SOE which aided these.

[edit] United States of America

American women also saw combat during World War II, firstly as nurses in the Army Nurses Corp and United States Navy Nurse Corps during the Pearl Harbor attacks on 7 December 1941. The Woman’s Naval Reserve and United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve were also created for women performing auxiliary roles. In July 1943 a bill was signed making the Women's Army Corps an official part of the regular army, but not in combat units. In 1944 WAC’s arrived in the Pacific and were landing in Normandy on D-Day. During the war, 67 Army nurses and 16 Navy nurses were captured and spent three years as Japanese prisoners of war. 350,000 American women served during World War Two and 16 were killed in action. American women also performed many varieties of non-combat military service in special units such as the WAVES, Women's Army Corps, and Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Indeeed World War II also marked milestones for women in the US military, Carmen Contreras-Bozak, who became the first Hispanic to join the WAC's, serving in Algiers under General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Minnie Spotted-Wolf the first female Native American woman to enlist in the United States Marines. In 1943, the first female officer of the United States Marine Corps was commissioned, and the first detachement of female marines was sent to Hawaii for duty in 1945.

[edit] United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, women were essential to the war effort, in both civilian and military roles. The contribution by women to the civilian war effort in the United Kingdom was acknowledged with the use of the words "Home Front" to describe the battles that were being fought on a domestic level with rationing, recycling, and war work, such as in munitions factories and farms. Men were thus released into the military. Women were also recruited into non-combat military units such as the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS or "Wrens") and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) thus further releasing men into the frontline. Auxiliary services such as the Air Transport Auxiliary also recruited women.

In Britain, women were not recruited into regular combat units, but the Special Operations Executive (SOE) did. They were used as agents and radio operators in Nazi occupied Europe.

[edit] Soviet Union

See also Women in the Russian and Soviet military

The country that saw the most women involved in combat during World War II was the Soviet Union. Women played a large part in most of the armed forces of the Second World War, more than any other country. The Soviet Union saw large numbers of women fighting in the front lines. Over 800,000 women served their Motherland in World War II, nearly 200,000 of them decorated and 89 of those women eventually received the Soviet Union’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union. They served as pilots, snipers, machine gunners, tank crew members and partisans, as well as in auxiliary roles. Very few of these women, however, were ever promoted to officers. Originally, women were turned away from combat missions when Germany first attacked the Soviets in 1941. But after the great losses of men suffered by the Soviet Union and the determination of women to be involved in the war effort, The Soviets eventually let more women join in both combat and non-combat roles. Soviet Women were well known for their roles as snipers and fighter/bomber pilots creating some of the most famed war heroes such as sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko (who killed over 300 German soldiers), and pilots Lydia Litvyak and Katya Budanova (the world's only two female fighter aces).

[edit] Poland

A grave of three Polish female soldiers who fell during the Invasion of Poland, 1939, among their colleagues interred at Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery
A grave of three Polish female soldiers who fell during the Invasion of Poland, 1939, among their colleagues interred at Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery

In occupied Poland, as elsewhere, women played a major role in the resistance movement, putting them in the front line. Their most important role was as couriers carrying messages between cells of the resistance movement and distributing news broadsheets and operating clandestine printing presses. During partisan attacks on Nazi forces and installations they served as scouts.

During the Warsaw Rising of 1944, female members of the Home Army were couriers and medics, but many carried weapons and took part in the fighting. Among the more notable women of the Home Army was Wanda Gertz who created and commanded DYSK (Women's sabotage unit). For her bravery in these activities and later in the Warsaw Uprising she was awarded Poland's highest awards - Virtuti Militari and Polonia Restituta. One of the articles of the capitulation was that the German Army recognized them as full members of the armed forces and needed to set up separate Prisoner-of-war camps to hold over 2000 women prisoners-of-war.[2].

[edit] Finland

Much like in the United Kingdom, the Finnish women took part in defence: nursing, air raid signaling, rationing and hospitalization of the wounded. Their organization was called Lotta Svärd, where voluntary women took part in auxiliary work of the armed forces to help those fighting on the front. Lotta Svärd was one of the largest, if not the largest, voluntary group in World War II. Though they never held guns (a rule among the Lottas), without women's help Finland probably could not have held off the Soviet forces as long as it did.

[edit] Germany

The Third Reich, contrary to popular belief, had similar roles for women. The SS-Helferinnen were regarded as part of the SS if they had undergone training at a Reichsschule SS but all other female workers were regarded as been contracted to the SS and chosen largely from concentration camps. Women also served in auxiliary units in the navy (Kriegshelferinnen), air force (Luftnachrichtenhelferinnen) and army (Nachrichtenhelferin). Hundreds of women auxiliaries (Aufseherin) served for the SS in the camps, the majority of which were at Ravensbrück.

[edit] Contemporary conflicts

While World War II was the largest and most notable of the wars going on during this period, many women were involved in other conflicts between 1939 and 1945, such as the Indian freedom fighter Aruna Asaf Ali, an Indian freedom fighter who hoisted Congress flag at Gowalia Tank park in Bombay in 1942.



[edit] See also

  • Heralda Luxin Woman who saved seven Jewish Children in Germany during the Second World War.


[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Women on the Homefront

  • D'Ann Campbell, Women at War With America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (1984)
  • Calder, Angus. The People's War: Britain 1939-45 (1969)
  • Costello, John. Love, Sex, and War: Changing Values, 1939-1945 (1985). US title: Virtue under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes
  • Darian-Smith, Kate. On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime, 1939-1945. Australia: Oxford UP, 1990.
  • Gildea, Robert. Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation (2004)
  • Maurine W. Greenwald. Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States (1990)
  • Hagemann, Karen and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum; Home/Front: The Military, War, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany. Berg, 2002.
  • Harris, Carol (2000). Women at War 1939-1945: The Home Front. Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited. ISBN 0-7509-2536-1.
  • Havens, Thomas R. "Women and War in Japan, 1937-1945." American Historical Review 80 (1975): 913-934. online in JSTOR.
  • Higonnet, Margaret R., et al., eds. Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars. Yale UP, 1987.
  • Marwick, Arthur. War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States. 1974.
  • J. Noakes (ed.), The Civilian in War: The Home Front in Europe, Japan and the U.S.A. in World War II. Exeter: Exęter University Press. 1992.
  • Pierson, Ruth Roach. They're Still Women After All: The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.
  • Wightman, Clare (1999). More than Munitions: Women, Work and the Engineering Industries 1900-1950. London: Addison Wesley Longman limited. ISBN 0-582-41435-0.
  • Williams, Mari. A. (2002). A Forgotten Army: Female Munitions Workers of South Wales, 1939-1945. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1726-X.

[edit] Women in Military service

  • Bidwell, Shelford. The Women's Royal Army Corps (London, 1977),
  • D'Ann Campbell, "Women in Combat: The World War Two Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union," Journal of Military History (April 1993), 57:301-323 online edition
  • D'Ann Campbell, Women at War With America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (1984)
  • D'Ann Campbell. "Women in Uniform: The World War II Experiment," Military Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 3, Fiftieth Year--1937-1987 (Jul., 1987), pp. 137-139 in JSTOR
  • K. Jean Cottam, ed. The Golden-Tressed Soldier (Manhattan, KS, Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian Publishing, 1983) on Soviet women
  • K. Jean Cottam, Soviet Airwomen in Combat in World War II (Manhattan, KS: Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian Publishing, 1983)
  • K. Jean Cottam, "Soviet Women in Combat in World War II: The Ground Forces and the Navy," International Journal of Women's Studies, 3, no. 4 (1980): 345-57
  • DeGroot G.J. "Whose Finger on the Trigger? Mixed Anti-Aircraft Batteries and the Female Combat Taboo," War in History, Volume 4, Number 4, December 1997, pp. 434-453(20)
  • Nicole Ann Dombrowski. Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted With Or Without Consent (1999)
  • Shelley Saywell, Women in War (Toronto, 1985);
  • Franz W. Seidler, Frauen zu den Waffen-- Marketenderinnen, Helferinnen Soldatinnen ["Women to Arms: Sutlers, Volunteers, Female Soldiers"] (Koblenz, Bonn: Wehr & Wissen, 1978)
  • Laurie S. Stoff. They Fought for the Motherland: Russia's Women Soldiers in World War I And the Revolution (2006)
  • Mattie Treadwell, The Women's Army Corps (1954)
  • Jeff M. Tuten, "Germany and the World Wars," in Nancy Loring Goldman, ed. Female Combatants or Non-Combatants? (1982)

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Adams, R.J.Q., (1978). Arms and the Wizard. Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions 1915 - 1916, London: Cassell & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-304-29916-2. Particularly, Chapter 8: The Women's Part.
  2. ^ Women of the Home army

[edit] External links

  • Railwaywomen in Wartime British women's work on the railways in both world wars - photos and text - free information.
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