What did women do in World War I?

Answer 1

In Britain, a lot of women went to work at jobs that had been left vacant by men. Women joined the police force, they worked as postwomen and chauffeurs and on the railways and in farming and forestry. They worked in offices and banks. Many became nurses, like Agatha Christie for instance who nursed in a hospital where she went to work in the dispensary, and acquired the knowledge of poisons which would be useful to her when she began to write her detective stories. there were women doctors as well, one London hospital had an entirely female medical staff. Some women joined the newly formed women's auxuiliary services, the women's army, navy, and airforce. Many women nurses and doctors went to France to work in hospitals there, and women were also working as ambulance drivers. A lot of women went to work in munitions factories.

25,000 American women came over to Europe long before America entered the war to work as nurses, canteen hostesses, ambulance drivers, and switchboard operators. the sixty-year-old American writer Margaret Deland, who was herself doing relief work in France, was inspired by their determination. "Has such a thing ever happened before in the world: A passionate desire on the part of the women of one people to go to the help of the men of another people/" Deland wondered if young European women would have gone as readily to the aid of soldiers in a North American war. The answere was probably no, because no other young women in the world enjoyed the independence of American girls in that era.

Relief and medical services int he early years of World War I were so uncoordinated that women who wre daring and willing could easily assign themsleves to duty. Barnard College sent women overseas as canteen workers after a one-week course that allegedly included instruciton in French, cooking, history, customs of the eruopean allied nations, games and storytelling. Others volunteers found themselves assisting doctors in the French hospitals. "I knew nothing about nursing and had to learn on my patients, a painful process for all concerned" said Juliet Goodrich, who had been a canteen worker until she was recruited to work in a Paris medical facility in 1918. Although the image of the relief worker was a dewy young girl, some of the American women who volunteered were middle-aged or older, like Deland., "I'm too old to fight, but I'm sending my mother" said Florence Kendall's son when she set sail for Europe. Edith Wharton, the American novelist, was fifty-two years old and living in Europe when the war broke out. She started a sewing workroom to employ displaced women, and established clinics, free clothing centres, a cooperative where refugees could buy cheap groceries, a day nursery, an employment agency, vocational trainging classes, and a tuberculosis clinic. She did it all without fanfare, and told a friend she had discovered that "it takes a great deal more time to do good than to have fun."

Sympathy for the overrun Belgians and imperiled French was high in America, and millions of women back home organised committes to roll bandages, raise relief funds, or even send aid to suffering French animals. but the volunteers who crossed the ocean were also in search of adventure "To be in the front ranks in this most dramatic event that was ever staged, and to be in the first group of women ever called out for duty with the United States Army...is all too much good fortune for any one person" enthused Julia Stimson, a nurse. Their derring-do was unflappable. "It isn't exactly an alluring prosepct to be exiled in the backwoods of Russia for a couple of months with only two English-speaking people to run an infectious hospital, but it will be rather fun" insisted Ruth Holden.

There were nearly 200,000 black servicemen overseas, and they were often ignored by white female volunteers. Black women eagerly offered to help, but they were almost always rebuffed by white officials. Some Red Cross administrators refused to allow them to do canteen work in the United States because they did not want African Americans wearing their uniform. Two thousand black nurses volunteered and were certified as ready for duty overseas, but American officials preferred not to bother finding them accomodation. Addie Waites Hunton, a college graduate who was on the national borad of the YMCA was turned down when she first requested that the organisation send her overseas. Eventually the Y did agree to send Hunton and two other black women. Hunton and her friends wound up as virtually the only African American women serving in Europe.

Answer 2

Many women worked in factories building weapons used in the war or took the place of men who were fighting.

Answer 3

They did the jobs that the soldiers ould not do because they were in the war.