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- Women had increased rights over property and children within marriage, and divorce. They were also receiving more education and could be involved in local politics. All of these laws paved the way for further reform in favour of women’s position in society.
www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/ztx66sg/revision/5Changing role of women - Domestic impact of World War One ...
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By 1918, more than 70,000 VADs had played a crucial part in the war effort and in a man's world, they were the perfect women, volunteers, not wanting equal pay, and not demanding a new kind of...
During World War One, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) stopped its political campaign and offered its full cooperation to the government. Meanwhile, the...
- Women’s Reactions to World War I
- Women and Employment
- Women and Propaganda
- Women in The Armed Forces and The Front Line
- Noncombatant Military Roles
- The Tensions of War
- Postwar Effects and The Vote
- The Larger Picture
Women, like men, were divided in their reactions to war, with some championing the cause and others worried by it. Some, like the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), simply put political activity largely on hold for the duration of the war. In 1915, the WSPU held its only demonstra...
The execution of “total war” across Europe demanded the mobilization of entire nations. When millions of men were sent into the military, the drain on the labor pool created a need for new workers, a need that only women could fill. Suddenly, women were able to break into jobs in truly significant numbers, some of which were ones they had previousl...
Images of women were used in propagandabeginning early in the war. Posters (and later cinema) were vital tools for the state to promote a vision of the war as one in which soldiers were shown defending women, children, and their homeland. British and French reports of the German “Rape of Belgium” included descriptions of mass executions and burning...
Few women served on the front lines fighting, but there were exceptions. Flora Sandes was a British woman who fought with Serbian forces, attaining the rank of captain by the war’s end, and Ecaterina Teodoroiu fought in the Romanian army. There are stories of women fighting in the Russian army throughout the war, and after the February Revolution o...
The role of women in nursing didn’t break as many boundaries as in other professions. There was still a general feeling that nurses were subservient to doctors, playing out the era’s perceived gender roles. But nursing did see major growth in numbers, and many women from lower classes were able to receive a medical education, albeit a quick one, an...
One impact of war not typically discussed is the emotional cost of loss and worry felt by the tens of millions of women who saw family members, men and women both, travel abroad to fight and get close to the combat. By the war’s close in 1918, France had 600,000 war widows, Germany half a million. During the war, women also came under suspicion fro...
As a result of the war, in general, and depending on class, nation, color, and age, European women gained new social and economic options, and stronger political voices, even if they were still viewed by most governments as mothers first. Perhaps the most famous consequence of wider women’s employment and involvement in World War I in the popular i...
In her 1999 book "An Intimate History of Killing," historian Joanna Bourke has a more jaded view of British societal changes. In 1917 it became apparent to the British government that a change in the laws governing elections was needed: the law, as it stood, only allowed men who had been resident in England for the previous 12 months to vote, rulin...
The First World War saw huge changes across society, including in women’s lives. Increasingly women played a key role on the Home Front, doing physically demanding labour from engineering to...
With the men drawn away to the armed forces, opportunities opened up for women. 117,000 women were employed in transport compared to just 18,000 women previously. The First World War also saw women enter heavy industry for the first time.
But how far did the war really impact women's lives and women's rights, or was it all 'for the duration'? Delving into the IWM film and sound archives, we uncover some incredible true stories of the women who served and worked during the First World War.
In this new, modern and highly-mechanised war with alarmingly high death tolls, there was a desperate shortage of manpower. What these women, along with those on the Home Front demonstrated was that when it mattered, women were quite capable of taking on war work and more responsibility.
