Let’s know more about Women and the First World War!

Ministry of Labour poster for the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps

• Women’s role in warfare has changed over time. In the medieval period,
women filled the domestic role in supporting soldiers at war. They were
tasked with cleaning clothes, providing food and treating wounds.
Meanwhile, women of nobility could own armour but were not expected
to use it in combat. By the 19th century, women served as nurses and
auxiliaries on the battlefield. During the Crimean War, Florence
Nightingale introduced reforms in patient care.
• When the First World War broke out, most women were employed on
the homefront and front line. The integration of women into the labour
force changed political, economic and social attitudes.
Women Before the First World War

• Before the outbreak of WWI in 1914, women were confined to

‘traditional roles’. This included domestic jobs at home such as cooking,
cleaning and child-rearing. Many women stayed at home and were a
mother. Women working outside the home was uncommon.
• Before 1918, women were not allowed to vote in a general election. Over
decades the suffrage movement in Britain transformed from
constitutional assertions to violent militancy.
• After continued delays in women’s suffrage legislation, suffragettes
resorted to arson and bombing of public buildings, hunger strikes and
attacks.
• In 1913, suffragette Emily Davison died after throwing herself in front of
King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby.
• Suffragists sought constitutional amendments through peaceful means,
while suffragettes used violent tactics. The NUWSS members were
suffragists, while members of the WSPU were suffragettes.
• In 1870, the Married Women’s Property Act allowed married women to
own property. This allowed women to keep their property when
divorced, married, single or widowed.
• In 1906, the National Federation of Women Workers was formed by
Mary MacArthur.
• In 1907, the Qualification of Women Act made women eligible to be
elected on to county councils and boroughs.

Women During the War

• The First World War (WWI), or the Great War, was an international
conflict that lasted from 1914 until 1918. The military conflict involved
empires in Europe, parts of the Middle East, and the US. Regarded as one
of the deadliest in the history of warfare, WWI resulted in the deaths of
over nine million military personnel and soldiers, and over five million
civilians.
• Prior to the outbreak of WWI, the British Army had around 80,000
regular troops ready for war. By 1914, around 710,000 men stood in
reserve. By the end of WWI, almost 1 in 4 men in Britain had joined
the military: 2.67 million as volunteers and 2.77 million as conscripts.

British women during the war

• Because of the introduction of conscription in 1916, the government

launched campaigns and recruitment drives, as female workers were
really needed. Large numbers of women took jobs left by men who had
gone to fight in the war.
• New jobs were created as part of the war effort. For example, many
women worked in munitions factories. In fact, it was one of the largest
sources of employment in 1918.
• Women began to work ‘men jobs’ such as railway guards and ticket
collectors, buses and tram conductors, postal workers, police officers,
firefighters and as bank tellers and clerks.
• Some women worked on precision machinery in engineering, others led
cart horses on farms or worked in the civil service and factories.
However, their wages were lower than men’s.

Images of British women on the homefront

• Fulfilling more ‘domestic’ tasks, some knitted socks for soldiers, did
volunteer work, and planted ‘victory gardens’ to help provide food.
• In 1917, as the Army was running out of men, the War Office decided
that women could do some front line jobs that did not involve fighting.
The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was organised into four
units: cookery, mechanical, clerical and miscellaneous. Women could do
work such as answering telephones and passing messages to soldiers,
cooking for men in camps and hospitals, repairing broken down vehicles,
etc.
• The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps became Queen Mary's Army
Auxiliary Corps (QMAAC) in 1918. More than 57,000 women served
between January 1917 and November 1918.
• In 1915, women in Britain were introduced to Women’s Institutes, which
urged women to study home economics. In the same year, suffragette
and conscientious objector Sylvia Pankhurst launched The Mothers’
Arms, a mother-and-baby clinic that promoted maternity and child
welfare.
• Following a strike led by the Women’s Housing Association in Glasgow,
the government introduced the Rent Restriction Act which prevented the
eviction of a soldier’s family unable to pay rent.
 • Given the rigorous work during the war, women began to demand equal
pay. The female employment rate increased from 23.6% in 1914 to
46.7% in 1918. About 40% of female workers were married women.
• In the last year of WWI, women workers went on strike. Munition factory
workers in Coventry began the ‘same work, same money’ motto. They
were followed by female bus and train workers from Bristol to
Birmingham and South Wales.
• Upon discovering that female welders were paid less than men, the
Society of Women Welders (SWW) was founded at Sopwith, in 1916.
With the help of the Women’s Trade Union Leagues and the London
Society of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the SWW
successfully negotiated an increase from 8 pence to 9 pence per hour.
Though not equal to the men’s rate of 12 pence (1s) per hour, it was
considered a win at the time.
• Furthermore, female trade union membership in the UK increased from
357,000 in 1914 to over a million in 1918. Men’s membership grew by
44% while women trade union membership increased by 160%.
• When WWI ended in 1918, combined war anxiety and pressures of
employment sidelined many women in the workforce. Many withdrew
from working and went back to their domestic roles. Many women were
employed under an agreement ‘within the duration of the war’.
• With the returning soldiers, women workers were divided. With scarce
work opportunities, single and widowed women argued that they should
be prioritised over married women.
• During the war, women were accepted as medical students in hospitals.
By the 1920s, they were rejected on the grounds of modesty.
• In 1918, the Representation of the People Act granted women over 30
with property the right to vote in a general election. For men, all property
qualifications were removed.
• Historians suggest that diverse women’s roles on the homefront showed
that they were capable of many things, which would prove important in
them winning the vote.

American women during the war

• When WWI broke out in Europe in 1914, US President Woodrow Wilson

remained neutral. However, the opinion of the American public started to
change after the sinking of the Lusitania, a British ocean liner attacked by
a German U-boat in 1915.
• The attack killed 128 American passengers. Furthermore, the Zimmerman
telegram between Germany and Mexico was intercepted, which led to
America’s formal declaration of war against Germany on 6 April 1917.
• WWI cemented America’s position in world affairs, especially its
economic and military might.
• The American counterpart of the NUWSS and WSPU, the National
American Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and the National Woman’s
Party (NWP) were successful in their suffrage movement in November
 1917. On 18 August 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified and
granted all American women the right to vote.
• In April 1917, NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw launched the
Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense to support the
war effort.
• About 8 million women volunteered in the American Red Cross as nurses
and aides to soldiers, sailors and other servicemen. Furthermore, the Red
Cross organised the Motor Service, which employed female drivers and
auto mechanics.
• Both on the homefront and abroad, the Salvation Army or Lassies
became a welcome sight for the allied forces.
• About 36 camp libraries were also erected during the war to provide
soldiers periodicals and books.

Women demanding full access to voting rights in front of the White House in 1917

• One of the most remarkable female contributions during the war was
from the so-called ‘Hello Girls’ or ‘Cable Girls’ who served as operators
for the US Army signal corps. About 7,000 women applied, while 223
were sent overseas. Others served as stenographers, clerks, radio
operators, drivers, cryptographers and mechanics.

Women in other parts of the world

• During WWI, American and British women were not allowed to be

soldiers. On the contrary, women served as combat troops in Russia,
Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria.
• Serbian Maria Bochkareva was known for founding the Women’s
Battalion of Death in 1917. Bochkareva received a special dispensation
to join the Russian army in 1914. The battalion was made up of some
2,000 women volunteers to shame men for not fighting.
• In July 1917, Bochkareva’s 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death
participated in the Kerensky Offensive in July 1917.
 • In the October 1917 Revolution, the 1st Petrograd Women’s Battalion
were among the soldiers who defended the Winter Palace.
• Through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russian participation in WWI ended
on 3 March 1918. In 1920, Bochkareva was executed by the Bolsheviks.
• Another Serbian female officer, Milunka Savić, captured 23 Bulgarian
soldiers during WWI. Savić first posed as a man in the Second Balkan War
in 1913.
• Eugenie Mikhailovna Shakhovskaya became the first female military pilot
when she flew reconnaissance missions for Russian Czar Nicholas II in
1914.

Additional Quick Facts

• In Britain, over 100 day nurseries were established across the country to
look for the children of munitions workers. The government did provide
some funds for childcare to meet the demand for female workers.
• Working in munitions factories was dangerous. Many were exposed to
TNT. Aside from being a highly explosive substance, too much exposure
was also poisonous. After the war, many female workers had toxic
jaundice.
• While working in munitions factories, women in Britain also engaged in a
new leisure and recreation – football. In 1917, the Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC
was founded in Preston.
• In the 1920s, newspaper headlines in Britain talked about a ‘surplus of
women’ who would never marry due to the number of casualties of
under-45s during the war.
• Due to women’s contributions to the war effort, clothing also evolved.
When working on auxiliary services, women wore trousers and looser-
waisted clothing.