A Look at the Roles Women Played Within the First World War and How They Were Documented Throughout Wartime History
In History
The old adage of children should be seen but not heard can also be applied to the historical record of women during wartime. When the war broke out in Europe in August 1914 women were seen both near the front lines and at the Homefront doing jobs they had always done plus additional work men left vacant or work that allowed them to keep food on the table. Still, within the historical storytelling of women in wartime their voice is either devoid or limited. One historian is quoted saying, “Women were ineligible for military service but not for service to the military.”
I have figuratively gathered six historians of the Great War around a large table with a question posed to each of them. Why have women been largely overlooked in the storytelling of wartime history? One explanation could be that women were simply nonexistent during WWI in key decision-making roles nor did they serve actively as soldiers or officers. It could also be argued that the exclusion of women wasn’t a deliberate decision made by historians in their writing about the war, but more likely an organic reality of gender and wartime in early twentieth century. Therefore, what do each of these six historians contribute, or not contribute, to the larger narrative of women? It can be argued that women have been omitted from most histories of the First World War, but their roles both at home and as militarized civilians will hopefully shed some light on their importance in telling a more thorough and complete story of war.
The typical story of women during wartime often began at home. Home was where women were expected to be and a place that was both socially acceptable and consisted of predetermined roles that went unquestioned by many women. Consequently, women remained invisible, un-noteworthy, and therefore undocumented at wartime. Home was also where many women felt, as one historian describes, “an overwhelming sense of sadness, worry, dread, and fear” as they sent their sons and husbands off to war. Moreover, by eliminating a woman’s contribution at wartime because it was deemed less significant than the male narrative, a crucial element of life is missing from the bigger historical story. In fact, another historian believes, “without civilian women labor and sacrifice, the war could not have been fought.” With this in mind, there was some blurring between women at home and women as militarized civilians. Women in villages near battle lines made ends meet, for example, by taking in washing and mending for soldiers. Another way women at home made ends meet and helped ease the financial burdens of wartime was keeping billeted soldiers in their homes, barns, or other large buildings on their property, and for some women this was their sole income during the war.
There are countless stories of women during wartime who billeted soldiers, ironed clothes, nurses who helped write letters, sent parcels filled with soap, or knitted scarves, and socks. One doctor’s wife sent provisions like shortbread, tinned sardines, lice combs, and medical scissors. Mothers of soldiers sent parcels with underwear, mouse traps, sausage, cakes, gingerbread, biscuits, and even a slice of fruitcake from a wedding of a childhood friend. From the confines of home, women contributed not only items that brought pleasure, safety, and assistance to the front lines, but also connected to the very essence of what they were fighting for.
On the home front, many women were determined, tenacious, and possessed incredible perseverance for survival, especially in terms of food shortages and keeping their family at home alive. Women in different countries stepped up when necessary to take over the agricultural responsibilities, adding to an already heavy workload for rural women, for instance, and many required young girls to work alongside older women in order to work the land as men would customarily do in pre-war times.
Throughout the war-torn countries, bans and restrictions on items like alcohol, coal, soap, leather, and other household items made life especially more difficult for urban women and ultimately led to disease, exposure, and infant mortality. Those in rural areas seemed to suffer less than their urban counterparts as farmers had access to eggs, butter, meats, and vegetables. According to historians, however, the historical literature focused more on the urban experience and less on what was happening in the countryside, making the rural woman’s story even more unknown. Even so, women across the globe suffered comparably in regard to food shortages or, with at least making sacrifices regarding food, as was the case in the United States where women were asked to partake in patriotic campaigns that suggested “food will win the war” and encouraged women to “prove your Americanism by eating less.” In Russia, large groups of women “vocally refused to leave [stores] until merchants dropped their prices on potatoes,” and women overall became soldiers in food wars against the state who “waited in lines, wrote letters to local officials, organized meager household resources, smuggled, stole, and illegally purchased supplies their families needed.”
In Great Britain, as the war raged on, the initial food hoarding and panic finally settled down over time but women at home were still required to be economical with their food supplies and the upper classes, for example, were asked to eat and drink just enough to survive but not to overindulge. Ultimately, the home front would prove to not be as important, according to some historians, as the overall war effort by noting, “though supplying food to the army and to the home front was critical for the maintenance of morale, agriculture became of lesser concern than the production of guns, ammunition, and other industrial products.” In contrast, other historians would disagree by arguing, “this was a war of bread and potatoes more than one of steel or munitions.”
The medical corps, and especially nursing, was one of the ways women participated in the First World War as militarized citizens. although not initially welcomed, here women would historically become a small part of the landscape of the war. To illustrate, just over a thousand British women served as nurses or aides during the Anglo-Boer War, and in WWI almost thirty thousand women served, not including the British Red Cross and other private organizations. Still, female nurses were not wanted by male officers, and according to one example, at the end of a wave of treating more than 200 casualties when a French colonel in command had a change of heart and “gone round congratulating the nurses afterwards, admitting that he didn’t know what he would have done without them.”
In place of actual work, however, many women made tea, did laundry, and came up with more efficient ways to treat the men like rolling up spare aprons and towels to be used as pillows. Nurses also created a bridge between home life and the front lines not just for themselves but for the soldiers they served. Christmas in 1916 nurses cooked puddings, decorated Christmas trees from the woods, and found mistletoe.
Women also volunteered for many reasons including patriotism, adventurous ideals, and sometimes just to be closer to their husbands. Many women who felt called to do their patriotic duty in Europe may have felt similar emotions to men: national honor, duty, loyalty, and desire to do war work at any cost. One woman is quoted as saying, “we, like men, can also take up arms and go to the defense of our motherland with honor and pride.” Others looked for a change of pace and a chance to travel the world. In Britain by 1918 the army alone had employed more than 10,000 women to work supporting operations in France and Belgium, while in the United States the army employed 12,000 women.
However, women who decided to volunteer and expected to do essential and meaningful work were oftentimes disappointed and many were not regarded as doing patriotic work. Women were instead subjected to jobs that consisted of serving tea or dancing with convalescent soldiers rather than engaging in the exciting war work they expected.
A clear discriminatory distinction between men and women was unmistakable when women tried to volunteer but were required to pay, unlike male soldiers, for the training course to be a Red Cross nurse and many were forced away from signing up because they couldn’t afford the start-up costs. Of course, not every woman wanted to be involved in wartime efforts or wartime work nor did they feel any sense of patriotism or duty to enter a typically male-dominated territory. One historian writes, “while some women jumped at the chance to become involved in the war effort in any way they could, others had to be compelled to work.”
Militarized women who were there to aid the war effort also faced issues with sexualization. While women who volunteered wanted to be part of the larger wartime effort, they were instead placed in roles that stereotyped them by gender and not necessarily their abilities. For example, the “unusual program” began in 1915 in France where women became war godmothers by adopting soldiers at the front to whom they could write letters and send packages. The war godmothers were billed as a way in which women could express their patriotism by providing these letters of comfort for soldiers who were far from home and perhaps giving French soldiers a sense of what they were fighting for. However, these war godmothers quickly became sexualized in popular imagination and the anonymity of the system led to fantasies. Also, young girls were recruited as nurses, given a salary and free meals but were there to satisfy the lust of the gentlemen officers and doctors only.
Despite the large number of women who did some kind of wartime work, many never received the recognition given to men at the end of the war. Historical record disregards the many contributions made by women between the home front and the militarized civilians during wartime and were unceremoniously excluded from celebratory events that honored the men of the Great War. One historian claims that “civilians felt like veterans of the conflict.” And, while perhaps a controversial and bold statement, it is not without some merit as many people, including women, experienced scars, horrors, and suffering without actually fighting on the front lines. A Romanian nurse commented about the end of the war ceremonies by saying, “I am not going to the parade. I am no longer anything more than a poor woman who lost her father, mother, brothers, relatives, friends.” Civilians simply faded into the background of war, denied the post war accolades, treated with suspicion, but carrying the weight of war into the postwar period.
In many instances, the writing of women was either excluded completely or written using mainly gender-neutral nouns, as is the case with one historian who retells the Great War and discusses the Battle of the Somme, for example, and refers to the players, the artillery bombardment, the divisions who went forward, and the defense positioning but doesn’t mention the women who were serving just beyond the battlefield treating wounded soldiers. Additionally, it was noted about the blockade and hunger stating how milk was reserved almost exclusively for young children, but makes little reference to their mothers, even as the topic of home life was discussed, and limits any mention of women other than to say, many poor women were reportedly involved in riots in the autumn of 1916.
Despite a subtitle of “home front” there is little mention of women in some historical record replaced instead with various nouns that are not synonymous with women. For example, “Russia had a plague of home front woes.” Or, “The country’s unimaginable suffering and sacrifice.” Or, “The overwhelming majority of people back home shared these specific sentiments.”
When the United States entered the war, women were referenced by only labeling them as “suffragettes” or “consumers.” By eliminating women from the narrative of war, it silences an important and crucial voice of the retelling of history in an otherwise male-only dialogue. But, when gender walls are torn down, history can be written in ways that include both women and men equally as participants, despite their gender. One historian argues, “By defining civilians as objects of war rather than active participants we create a vision of war that is profoundly gendered.”
Is the exclusion of women in the history of the First World War changing? It’s true that in the last several decades women’s history has begun to formulate a presence but there is still much to be told of women’s experiences of wartime. According to historians, in Germany, a historical document from 1992 shows that “during the Battle of the Somme, the history of civilians is given equal prominence to the history of the soldiers,” and correlates in some ways about civilians feeling like veterans of war.
One can ascertain that while women were not always vocal in their historical impact on the Great War, it would be too simple to assume all women were accepting of the exclusion but instead perhaps only accustomed to their predetermined roles. The discussion of women within the context of the First World War begs further questions, such as, where does further research on women in the scope of wartime go from here? One historian makes a passing reference to civilians suffering from psychological trauma, and the idea that women could have experienced something similar to shell shock too is a topic largely unexplored by many historians referenced here. But, it is an important component to the larger story, perhaps.
Famed German artist, Kaehe Kollwitz, who also lost a son during WWI, had said, “In days to come people will hardly understand this age.” In effect, her sentiment becomes true if the voices and stories of women remain missing from wartime history.
Sources: Eric Dorn Brose, “A Hisotgry of the Great War: World War One and the International Crisis of Early Twentieth Century,” 2010. Emily Mayhew, “Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War One,” 2014. Catriona Pennell, “A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland,” 2012. Tammy Proctor, “Civilians in a World at War: 1914-1918,” 2010. Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, “The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present,” 2005.