Before WWI, women were restricted to traditionally feminine jobs. Their work was considered inferior and they were paid less than men. However, once WWI began, women were able to integrate themselves into a variety of different workforces. Since most men were off to serve in the military and navy, women that stayed behind replaced their positions in factories and other industries. Other women worked closely with the military as nurses or even soldiers. The war had provided a variety of employment opportunities for women and the most common job for women was at home, working in factories and filling in positions for their husbands, fathers, and brothers in their absence. Although the highest demand for workers were in previously male-dominated …show more content…
However, many women were very inexperienced when they first started. According to the BBC article, “World War One: The many battles faced by WW1’s nurses,” “Thousands of young women from middle-class homes with little experience of domestic work, not much relevant education and total ignorance of male bodies, volunteered and found themselves pitched into military hospitals.” (S2) In other words, not all of the heroic nurses we hear about were very experienced at first. Most had to learn very quickly because of the enormous number of soldiers that needed to be tended to. Another quote from the same article is, “The image and the conspicuous Red Cross uniforms were romantic but the work itself exhausting, unending and sometimes disgusting.” (S2) This quote shows the reality of being a nurse in WW1. It wasn’t all fun and games. Death was constantly surrounding nurses which most likely scarred many of them for years. Soldiers constantly had to be tended to, and nurses had to be a source of relief as well as good caretakers. Not to mention that a lot of nurses had to be out on the trenches, caring for soldiers while also risking being killed
“There had been sickness aplenty from the start, deadly "camp fever," which grew worse as summer went on. Anxious mothers and wives from the surrounding towns and countryside came to nurse the sick and dying.” (Chapter 2) The woman that volunteered to nurse in the army had the main thought of keeping their own families safe, not the idea of
The conditions they worked in were terrible and they had barely any medication or tools to work with due to the scarcity of resources, difficulty of bringing them to the sites, and the fact that most of the diseases weren't even curable at that time, or very difficult to treat. Nurses of WWI worked from sun up to sun down, and barely got any sleep. However, this did not bother many nurses because they were so dedicated to their work and wanted the soldiers to be healed as soon as possible. "We had another air raid. This time the bombs were dropping all about us.
Women during the war became nurses, cost guards, sold war bonds, telephone operators, anything that needed to be done. When the men left for war the women stepped into to every role. Women's hard work showed that they were not as fragile as men believed and they were capable of everything a man could do. A large part of America's success in the war is attributed to the work of women. The work of women also helped convince President Wilson to support women's rights.
Not only were the women recruited into the old jobs vacated by the men, who had gone to fight in the war, but new jobs were also created as part of the war effort. The government’s attitude towards female employment at first was negative as they were reluctant to allow the women to do any jobs left by the men. This later changed, as the government began pushing forward the idea of employment of women through campaigns and recruitment drives. Working as railway guards and ticket collectors, buses and tram conductors, postal workers, police, firefighters and as bank tellers and clerks, women began to change the concept of what was before deemed as ‘men’s
Thier work directly lowered the American casualty mortality rate. Amongst the many lives lost, around 201 nurses died serving in the war. Veteran nurses brought home valuable skills due to their experiences. This increased their professionalism and self esteem. Nurses in the army had been trained in specialities like anesthesia and psychiatric care which proved to be valuable even after
At this time, nursing was seen as a job only men could do. Women were seen as weak, and people assumed they would pass out at the sight of blood, or cry when they saw people in pain. Dorothea knew that there would be a great need for nurses and planned to start a female Army Nursing Corps. These women would all be volunteers. However, when she presented this to the Surgeon General, she was refused, partly because she was a woman and wanted a female staff, and partly because everyone thought the war would last three months or less, and the General didn’t believe they would need that many
However, around 2000 women served in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS), 23 of these women died from illnesses or wounds during their time serving. Since many of the men in Australia were fighting, the women had to take charge; caring for their children and family alone without the help of husbands, brothers or fathers, all while suffering with the fear that their loved ones might not make it home. Women had to fill the shoes of men in the workforce, taking up jobs that women wouldn't typically do. Some of these jobs included being in the police force, railway work, farming, textiles work, bus conducting, postal working, engineering, working in the coal industry, ship building, ammunition factory work, nursing, tailoring, metal trades, food trades, and many other
But, as the war progressed, more and more women were able to go overseas to serve primarily as nurses. Over 80,000 volunteered to serve as nursing assistants in Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD), and Canadian nurses were able to hold the same ranking as officers in the Allied forces.
Shortly after the men started leaving to go into war women began to break away from their traditional house roles. Due to the men leaving for the war, the work force started to decrease. Women began to fill mens shoes in jobs such as bank clerks, ticket sellers, chauffeurs, elevator operators, etc. as a result. Labor Unions were adamant that women not work in the factories.
As depicted in Document 3, more women were joining the workforce in factories and having jobs only before being occupied by men. More women were joining the workforce in response to the open positions caused by men enlisting and being drafted into the war. To continue the U.S.'s productivity of supplies and to support themselves and their families, women began to take positions in workplaces that were mostly looked at to be as men's jobs by society. Women had more financial independence and were able to be employed in a larger variety of jobs due to the need for women working in factories to make materiels for World War
American women have participated in defense of this nation in both war and peacetime. Their contributions, however, have gone largely unrecognized and unrewarded. While women in the United States Armed Forces share a history of discrimination based on gender, black women have faced both race and gender discrimination. Initially barred from official military status, black women persistently pursued their right to serve. At the outset of World War I, many trained black nurses enrolled in the American Red Cross hoping to gain entry into the Army or Navy Nurse Corps.
The Civil War was a series of battles fought from 1861 to 1865 between the North, the Union, and the South, the Confederacy, of the United States of America over the disagreements on the acceptance of slavery. It was a long fought war with high casualties on both sides. Due to that, even more civilians were needed to become soldiers, spies, and etc. Men were always the ones that were expected to fill those positions, despite some of them not wanting to. Women were expected to stay home as the men in their life left for the war.
Australian women had a very broad range of duties and responsibilities during World War II. Their roles also changed a lot for a long time during 1939 to 1945. There are some factors that show how their roles changed. These factors are participation in military services, education to work in skilled employment and transformation of attitudes and beliefs of society.
In the article it says that women entered jobs like engineering, other professions, and manufacturing jobs that many people believed that those jobs were too dangerous for women and women were too weak. In their jobs, women made airplanes, warships, munitions, and tanks working in technical and scientific fields. Also, after the war, women were still employed as secretaries, waitresses, or in other clerical jobs. This was often called the “pink collar” force. This article shows how sometimes women are given clerical jobs that show people underestimate the abilities of women.
In the book written by (Gavin, 1997) it was cited that “As women took over from their absent men in hundreds of new and challenging occupations, many of which had previously been considered inappropriate”. From the beginning of the World War 1, the German women were participating a great deal. They contributed to half a million-people working on the munitions manufacturing alone (Gavin, 1997). It also mentioned in the book that over in the U.S, the men in charge refused to let the women participate up until April 1917 (Gavin, 1997). The U.S government never formally authorize the enrolment of women, despite Army officials repeatedly asking for such personnel’s.