Women's Roles In World War I

Women's Support Roles in the World Wars Right up to the outbreak of World War I, feminists on both sides pledged themselves to peace, in transnational women's solidarity. Within months of the war's outbreak, however, "all the major feminist groups of the belligerents had given a new pledge - to support their respective governments." Suddenly, campaigners for women's suffrage became avid patriots and organizers of women in support of the war effort. Many of these feminists hoped that patriotic support of the war would enhance the prospects for women's suffrage after the war, and this came true in a number of countries.

The more than 25,000 US women who served in Europe in World War I did so on an entrepreneurial basis, especially before 1917.
Many of these "self-selected adventurous women ... found their own work, improvised their own tools ... argued, persuaded, and scrounged for supplies. They created new organizations where none had existed." Despite hardships, the women had "fun" and "were glad they went." Women sent out to "canteen" for the US Army - providing entertainment, sewing on buttons, handing out cigarettes and sweets - were "virtuous women" sent to "keep the boys straight." Army efforts to keep women to the rear proved difficult. "Women kept ignoring orders to leave the troops they were looking after, and bobbing up again after they had been sent to the rear." Some of the US women became "horrifyingly bloodthirsty" in response to atrocity stories and exposure
One reason for US women to support the war effort, she argued, was the character of Prussian culture which glorified brute force, supported men's domination of women, and treated children harshly. To men dubious of women's entry into the labor force, Blatch argued that "[e]very muscle, every brain, must be mobilized if the national aim is to be achieved." Blatch praised women's contributions in Britain, where participating in the war effort had made women "capable ... bright-eyed, happy." She described England as "a world of women - women in uniforms; ... nurses ... messengers, porters, elevator hands, tram conductors, bank clerks, bookkeepers, shop attendants ... Even a woman doing ... womanly work ... dusted a room for the good of her country ... They were happy in their work, happy in the thought of rendering service, so happy that the poignancy of individual loss was carried more easily." This happiness seems dubious as a general proposition, but for some individuals it must have been true. One woman wrote that she was "nearly mad with joy" at being sent to Serbia to do war work. Women at the front used very different language than those at home - receiving, in the words of one, "something hidden and secret and supremely urgent ... .You are in another world, and ... given new senses and a new