This was the first time in many years that the women played a significant role in war. Even though women were now the highest in the household, all attention was turned to outside of their home. Civil War nurses cleaned and bandaged wounds, fed soldiers, gave out medication and assisted surgeons during operations and medical procedures like amputations. Nurses were considered “The Angels of the Battlefield”. The Civil War started in 1861 and ended in 1865.
Ife Otukoya Period 5 Women in the Civil War: Positive or Negative A lot of historians would say that the Civil War took a negative toll on the country, but I say that it was positive. I say it’s positive because first, slaves were allowed to vote, and women’s rights were extended. They were able to take on the jobs and responsibilities once thought to be a man’s. In the present day women are out numbering men in the nursing profession. Before the civil war it was mostly men who were nurses, but since a lot of them went to war, the ladies took on the job.
Before 1914, only a few countries had given the right to vote to women, and apart from these countries women were little involved in the political process. More than any previous wars, World Wars I hinged as much on industrial production as it did on battlefield clashes. With millions of men away fighting and with the inevitable horrendous casualties, there was a severe shortage of labor in a range of industries, from rural and farm work to city office jobs. During World War I, women were called on, by necessity, to do work and to take on roles that were outside their traditional gender expectations. Women took on jobs that were traditionally regarded as skilled men's work.
World War ll Military Women During World War II, some 350,000 women served in the U.S. Armed Forces, both at home and abroad. At the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt and women's groups, and impressed by the British use of women in service, General George Marshall supported the idea of introducing a women's service branch into the Army. In May 1942, Congress instituted the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, later upgraded to the Women's Army Corps, which had full military status. Its members, known as WACs, worked in more than 200 non-combatant jobs stateside and in every theater of the war. By 1945, there were more than 100,000 WACs and 6,000 female officers.
Using my own research i will discover whether the World War One had a positive effect on the role of women. After the immediate rise in female unemployment at the beginning of the war due to the ‘middle-classes wish to economise’ (first world war, accessed 07/01/09), the only option to replace the volunteers gone to front was to employ women in the jobs they had left behind. This was supported by all the major feminist groups, who suddenly ‘became avid patriots and organisers of the women in support of the war effort’ (war and gender, accessed 22/01/09). Overall women’s employment increased from ‘three million in 1914 to five million in 1918’ (Murphy, p373, 2000). For many of the women the war was ‘a genuinely liberating experience’ (first world war, accessed 07/01/09), and made the women feel useful as citizens.
World War 1 played a significant part in developing women's political rights in both positive and negative ways. World War one may have foiled the drive by women to gain political rights just as much or even more so then it helped. Pre war women did have working opportunities though very little compared to men, as they were seen as weaker and that their place was in the "home". Their employment was limited to the domestic service (cleaning or working as a servant) and secretarial work and not manual labor in factories or working class women often worked in the textiles industry. Women were lower paid and were restricted to do less skilled work, as they were considered incompetent.
In WWII women played an enormously tremendous role in Canada’s victory both on the home front and the war front. As men went off into war, their jobs back in Canada were left empty and therefore the women had to fill their spots. Having women work the men’s jobs during WWII make it possible for men to leave their working posts and go to war. If woman had not taken over the jobs, there would be production of munitions or other every day supplies (John D Clare). Men would have not been able to go to war in the woman had not been there to take their posts.
They began to take up jobs that would be considered unsuitable for women before 1914, such as working in munitions factories and other war industries. Many women volunteered to work overseas as nurses or ambulance drivers. They also drove buses, streetcars, and worked on police forces and civil service jobs. They were also needed for agriculture. Almost all jobs men did before they left to fight in the war were now a women’s job.
The Declaration of Independence’s wording specifies “All men are created equal.” Ever since then women have been determined to rewrite those words. Women were finally guaranteed the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. Prior to the passage of this amendment women's suffrage was only guaranteed in some of the states and agitation for equal suffrage was carried on by only a few individuals (Wolgast 50). Women in America have always Dating back the early 1800’s women have broken away from the norm. Women like Emma Hart Willard who founded the Troy Female Seminary in New York which was the first endowed school for girls, helped empower women to see that there can be change.
Women played many roles in the civil war. They did not wait for the men in their lives to come home from the battlefield. Many women supported the war effort as nurses and aides, while others took a more upfront approach and secretly enlisted in the army or served as spies and smugglers. These new jobs delimitate their traditional roles as housewives and mothers and made them an important part of the war effort. Two of the important women in the civil war were, Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman.