Women in World War I

Women in World War I were mobilized in unprecedented numbers on all sides. The vast majority of these women were drafted into the civilian work force to replace conscripted men or to work in greatly expanded munitions factories. Thousands served in the military in support roles, and in some countries many saw combat as well.

In some countries, women undertook resistance work and espionage, work related to the medical profession, journalism and combat. Many were recognized with medals awarded by their own and other countries.

Many disguised their gender. When discovered, in countries including Germany, Serbia, and Russia they were allowed to serve openly. In Britain and France, they were generally dismissed from service.

Reasons for participation

The motives of the women who actively joined the war effort were varied. Some were trying to prove their worth as supporters of loved ones in the military, while others were attracted by the idea of being useful in positions other than those considered "women's work."

Many women believed that their contribution to the war effort would help their attempts to gain the right to vote. And, in fact, the global women's suffrage movement continued to make gains during the course of the war, with Denmark and Iceland granting full suffrage to women in 1915; voting rights were also expanded the following year in Norway and Canada. In February 1918, the United Kingdom passed a major suffrage law that was considered directly related to the importance of women's participation in the war effort. After years of opposition, United States President Woodrow Wilson changed his position in 1918 to advocate women's suffrage in recognition of their services.

Anti-war sentiment

Other women protested against the war and tried to persuade world leaders to end it. For example, in 1915, the International Congress of Women held a meeting commonly called the Women's Peace Congress or Women at the Hague, which was attended by more than 1,000 women in the Netherlands.

Journalists and other writers While many women who participated in the war kept diaries or notes they later published as memoirs, some female journalists went to the front lines and beyond to get stories about what was actually happening during the war. Like their male counterparts, they were subjected to close supervision and censorship, but they had even more difficulty gaining access to information they wanted for their stories. Mildred Aldrich was an American journalist, editor, writer and translator. In 1914, shortly before the start of World War I, she retired to a house in the French countryside overlooking the Marne River valley. She published a novel and four accounts of her life based on collections of her letters written during the war years. In 1922, she was awarded the French Legion of Honour in recognition of her assistance to soldiers and refugees and the influence her books apparently had in persuading the United States government to declare war on Germany. Madeleine Zabriskie Doty was an American attorney and journalist. In 1915, as a correspondent for the New York Evening Post, she attended the Women's Peace Congress, also called Women at the Hague, in the Netherlands. She was then commissioned by the New-York Tribune to report on wartime Germany. Despite not speaking the language, she made two trips to Germany, during which she met with pacifist Social Democrats. On her second trip, she saw how the Allied blockade was only leading to intense hunger among the people. Despite constant surveillance, she was allowed to join an official tour of Germany for journalists. She returned to the United States and published several articles in major publications. These were subsequently collected in a book called Short Rations: An American Woman In Germany,1915–1916, published in 1917. American nurse and author Ellen La Motte worked in a French hospital in Belgium to get her story. Her book The Backwash of War was published in 1916. Instead of promoting glory and heroism, the book focused on the agonizing deaths of men far from their friends and families. The book was banned in France and Great Britain but well-received in the United States until that country joined the war, when it was banned there, too. Dorothy Lawrence was an aspiring English journalist who wanted to be a war correspondent. In 1915, she travelled to France and posed as a male soldier working as a sapper for the Royal Engineers. After 10 days, health problems led her to turn herself in. Upon her release, she was forced to sign an affidavit agreeing not to write about her experiences. After the war, she published a book called Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier (1919), but it was highly censored and not successful. In 2003, her story was rediscovered. Her autobiography was republished in 2010, and she was featured in an exhibition on women at war at the Imperial War Museum. Since 2015, several plays and films have been produced based on Lawrence's story. Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard (1917) was written and illustrated by American Mary Ethel McAuley, an artist and war correspondent for the Pittsburgh Dispatch, who spent two years in Germany during the war. Published after the United States entered the war, the book was considered much too sympathetic toward ordinary Germans and was immediately seized by the government. American mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart, a regular contributor to The Saturday Evening Post, persuaded the editor of the Post to send her to the front lines in Belgium in 1915. Based on her earlier training as a nurse, she convinced the Belgian Red Cross to give her access to the army hospitals, and she was allowed to tour the Belgian front, including no man's land. She also received permission for personal interviews with King Albert I of Belgium, his wife Queen Elisabeth, and Queen Mary of England, wife of British King George V. In addition, she interviewed Allied leaders Ferdinand Foch and Winston Churchill. Upon her return home, Rinehart wrote 10 articles for The Saturday Evening Post based on her observations. The articles were also published in The London Times and subsequently collected into a book entitled Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front.

Austria-Hungary In late July 1914 the Viennese press circulated a message published by Austria's first major women's group, the Frauenhilfsaktion Wien, appealing to "Austria's women" to perform their duties to the nation and take part in the war effort. Women would be expected to provide much of the necessary manpower during this time and, depending on social class, some would even take part in the leadership of local communities in Austria.

Notable individual Viktoria Savs enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army disguised as a man and was decorated for bravery fighting on the Italian Front in the Alps.Reinhard Heinisch: Frauen in der Armee – Viktoria Savs, das „Heldenmädchen von den Drei Zinnen“. In: Pallasch, Zeitschrift für Militärgeschichte. Heft 1/1997. Österreichischer Milizverlag, Salzburg 1997, ZDB-ID 1457478-0, S. 41–44. She and Stephanie Hollenstein were the only two known Austrian women on the front line.

British Empire

In the military

Women volunteered to serve in the military in special women-only corps; by the end of the war, over 80,000 had enlisted.Robert, Krisztina. "Gender, Class, and Patriotism: Women's Paramilitary Units in First World War Britain." International History Review 19#1 (1997): 52–65. Many served as nurses in the following: The Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) The Territorial Force Nursing Service.

Other corps were created to release men from non-combatant roles in the armed forces. The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, later called Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). The WAAC was divided into four sections: cookery; mechanical; clerical and miscellaneous. Most stayed on the Home Front, but around 9,000 served in France. The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) The Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF)

Two organizations trained women to use weapons in case of an enemy invasion, but the women never actually served in combat: the Women's Emergency Corps, which became the Women's Volunteer Reserve

By the end of World War 1, over 21,000 American women served as nurses in the Army Nurse Corps, even though they were not given official military rank. Many of these nurses treated soldiers who had been hurt by poison gas, gunshot wounds to the chest, and broken bones in hospitals in France and Germany.

World War 1 was a big turning point of nursing. Because the war was so violent and involved so many wounded soldiers, doctors and nurses had to quickly improve how they treated injuries, infections, and mental health problems. Nurses helped lead many of these changes. They also helped create new ways to help soldiers recover, such as activity based therapies and planned recovery programs. The war showed how important nurses were for both the body and the mind of wounded soldiers.

During the 1918 flu pandemic, military nurses became the main caregivers for sick soldiers because there were no strong medicine to cure the illness. The army nurses corps grew from just 403 nurses to more than 21,480, and over 9,000 of them were sent overseas. Nurses helped lower fevers, give fluids, clean wounds, keep hospitals sanitary, and watch patients closely day and night. They worked in crowded hospitals and were often extremely tired. Many nurses became sick, and some died. Out of the 134 nurse deaths in the war, 127 were caused by disease, not by enemy attacks.

Poster campaign

Propaganda, in the form of posters to encouraged women to work in factories, did not show the more dangerous aspects of wartime labour conditions,Hupfer, Maureen. "A Pluralistic Approach to Visual Communication: Reviewing Rhetoric and Representation in World War I Posters". University of Alberta. Advances in Consumer Research. (1997): 322–26. but appealed to women to join the workforce and play their part in the war. Other posters were designed to encourage women to persuade their men to join the armed forces. One poster has a romantic setting as the women look out of an open window as the soldiers march off to war. The poster possesses a romantic appeal when, in reality, many women endured extreme hardships when their husbands enlisted. Many war posters challenged current social attitudes that women should be passive and emotional, and have moral virtue and domestic responsibility. In one war propaganda poster, titled "These Women Are Doing Their Bit", a woman is represented as making a sacrifice by joining the munitions industry while the men are at the front. The woman in this poster is depicted as cheerful and beautiful, conveying that her patriotic duty will not reduce her femininity. These posters do not communicate the reality of munitions labour, including highly explosive chemicals or illnesses due to harsh work environments. The persuasive images of idealized female figures and idyllic settings were designed to solicit female involvement in the war and greatly influenced the idea of appropriate feminine behavior in wartime Britain. As a result, many women left their domestic lives to join munitions work, enticed by images of better living conditions, patriotic duty and high pay.

Munitions factories