Patrick Moran

History 511

11/12/15

Women and the First World War

 Nearly all the belligerents engaged in the cataclysm of the First World War spoke of the

war for the preservation of civilization. A contest of wills, a war for the very survival of their

nation, their culture, and their way of life. The necessity for all of her population to rally to the

defense of the home country.In essence they were stating the very founding principles of total

war. When every resource at a nation's disposal: raw materials, the entire populace, and

collective will, must be utilized to defeat ones enemies. This is a natural response to the

engagement of industrialized warfare. All of the great powers even in 1914 knew that warfare

had entered a stage of mechanization and mass production. They were aware this new contest

would embroil the entire nation into the war effort. The role of women in the war effort began

almost as soon as the troops left their embarkation points for the front, and over the next four

years changed not only the course of the war, but women's place in society, and society's view of

itself. The experience of women in the First World War changed total warfare from concept to

working hypothesis for the experiences of women in the First World War validated total warfare

as a justifiable and indeed necessary reaction to industrialized warfare.

The populist image of the female effort in World War I is typified by the white middle-

class formerly posh woman leaving her Victorian comforts and sensibilities to roll up her sleeves

and work hard in a factory to support King and country, home and hearth. While on the surface

some of these stereotypical tropes are founded in factual truth the reality is much more complex.

Women have been present in the workplace long before the outbreak of World War I. Not just as

midwives, servants, and caretakers of children. Since the Industrial Revolution had spread to all

corners of Europe women had entered the industrialized work force. Despite stories of isolated

upper-middle-class women entering factories mostly used for propaganda purposes the vast

majority of women working industrial jobs in the belligerent countries already were in the
workforce. It was not so much patriotism that motivated these women but opportunities to

engage in non-remedial more technically skilled work for better pay.1Many women enter the

workforce for many different reasons. Every country engaged in state sponsored support of

families but more often than not this was insufficient. Factory pay while unequal to men was still

drastically higher than domestic employment.2 The policies and levels of participation varied

from nation to nation. France’s percentage of new women entering the workforce was lower but

this is due to the fact France already had the highest prewar concentration of women in the

industrialized workforce3 The powers of the triple alliance while being the most vocal

proponents of total war had varying approaches to women in the workforce. Germany had the

lowest percentage of women in the workforce mostly because Germany had a long-standing

history of powerful trade unionists.4 Austria on the other hand saw massive labor shortage and by

some estimates in 1915 alone nearly half the metalworking industry employed women5 Women

in the workforce broke racial barriers as well. The United States despite its short involvement

was more impacted by the decreased influx of European immigrants. This correlates to a

decrease in African-Americans engaged in domestic work between 1910 and 1920, as they left to

seek industrialized employment in the nation’s urban centers.6 Despite the involved powers

propaganda campaigns which painted the female worker as a patriotic women picking up where

the men left off (and indeed some were motivated by patriotic necessity to do their part) the idea

of state sanctioned female work was met with resistance and only reached wider acceptance as

the war dragged on and manpower shortages grew more desperate7This willingness and want to

work and serve the nation on equal terms would have long standing economic, social, and gender

ramifications long after the fighting had ceased.

 Social work and nursing was another area of employment that women were actively

engaged in during the prewar period that drastically increased during the war.As with labor the

view of nurses and their role in the Great War increased as the duration of the war elongated.

Nursing was viewed with a lesser degree of hesitation due to it being “less of a direct challenge

to gender roles”.8 Every nation grappled with the inclusion of women into the medical service,

and just how close these women should be to the front. This situation proved impossible to

control and as war dragged on nurses worked closer and closer to the front even incurring

casualties9 this direct firsthand experience with the horrors of mechanized warfare resounded

deeply in many of the young women that experienced it. These experiences would only further

codify justification of suffragette movements, for even the “innocencent”10of society had

experienced its horrors equalizing both the experience and the memory of the First World War.

Women engaged in new roles as well during the First World War. Women were

employed “to police” this new female workforce, notably in England with the Voluntary Women

Patrols in the Woman’s Police Service.11 They engage in espionage, and some like Edith Cavell,

Louise de Bettignies and most famously Mata Hari gave their lives in this pursuit.12 Even in a

few select instances engaging in actual combat alongside men on the various fronts of the war,

notable examples being Dorothy Lawrence, Flora Sanders, and Ecaterina Teodoroiu13 The

Russian “Women Battalion of Death” which name leads little to its actual activities and more to

its perception is both an example of the contributions women could make to the war effort

directly in combat and preexisting views of gender and warfare14

Women’s involvement in the First World War completely validated the concept of total

war. Without the level of female involvement that occurred in all of the belligerent states the

course of the war could not ofprogressed as we know it. As the war raged on the role of women
and their level of participation greatly increased. Despite many of these women whether

voluntarily or involuntarily returning to prewar employment once the war had ceased,15 the effect

their involvement had made on warfare and society was irreversible. No longer could nations

engage in warfare on such a grand scale without the involvement of women. From henceforth

belligerents would seek to include and not exclude women in their war efforts. For without

women very nature of total warfare is impossible. The ramifications of women’s participation on

a larger scale during the First World War can be echoed in the resurgent and intensified

suffragette movements that swept over the globe in the early 1920s. How could these

governments ask women to serve the nation and share in the experiences of the horrors of war

and still be relegated to secondary status? Women’s involvement in the First World War

challenged preconceived notions of class, race, gender, and sexuality. Much of the world

changed after the cataclysm of the First World War ended. Whole empires fell, new countries

were created, and an entire review and restructure of these societal concepts was underway. But

was all of this change too much for the status quo? In the early 20th century women and warfare

was as alien a concept, met with as much suspicion and hostility, as is the inclusion of robotics in

21st century warfare. Is this why the concept of total war has only been used in practice twice in a

span of only 31 years from 1914 to 1945? There is a whole myriad of reasons why now Western

powers shy away from total war and have returned to a period of limited war. The most notable

example is the incarnation and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Aside from mankind’s ability to

destroy itself in nuclear holocaust, society now has an understanding that total warfare also has

the ability to destroy and restructure the entire fabric of society breaking all lines of gender,

class, and race. No one can say what changes could be wrought from such a full elongated

embracement of total war but we have a glimpse. Women’s involvement in the First World War
not only drastically changed the course of the war, but the demographic and direction of the

postwar world. Their participation validated total war to such an extent that it now subverts it as

a military construct.
1
Susan R. Grayzel, Women and the First World War(Pearson Education Limited: Essex England, 2002) pg. 28-29
2
Grayzel pg. 29
3
Grayzel pg.30
4
Grayzel pg.31
5
Grayzel pg.33
6
Grayzel pg.33
7
Grayzel pg 27, 31-32
8
Grayzel pg 37
9
Grayzel pg38
10
Grayzel pg41
11
Grayzel pg36
12
Grayzel pg 43-45
13
Grayzel pg 53-57
14
Grayzel pg 54-55
15
Grayzel pg 32