Women's Contribution To World War One

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World War One was brutal and took many lives. Every able-bodied man was conscripted in many countries, which left the home front in the hands of the women. Women were major contributors to the war effort and the war would have ended much sooner if it were not for their efforts. Susan Grayzel writes, “A majority of women made vital if often invisible contributions to the war effort.” Women took on new roles that challenged the social status quo. Many took up jobs they did not have the training of ability to do in their entirety while still taking care of the home. Women are definitely one of the heroes of the First World War. Women were the key to World War One on the home front. Women contributed in so many ways to the war effort. These contributions…show more content…
Grayzel writes, “It was clear that relying on the labour of women, boys, and older men was insufficient to maintain pre-war levels of production.” While some work was better than no work, women were unable to fully utilize the industrial sector and as a result the economies declined. This was especially a problem for the women who were doing the work of two. Grayzel goes on to say, “Insecurity about providing food and shelter struck at the heart of the tasks of maintaining home life, for which women were responsible in the absence of their men.” Women became well aware that they could not support a household in the same manner that their husbands could. “And women felt keenly their inability to maintain pre-war standards for their families.” The defined gender roles were changed because of the war; women were now doing jobs that would have been taboo prior to the war. Women were during this time expected to tend to the home and possibly work in a factory producing cloth. To see women working in munitions factories and being the police force at home was socially unacceptable at this time. These changes were a direct result of the war. The most unacceptable occurrence was in the case in Russia; as Stockdale writes, “From the outset of the war, a small number of Russian women made a still more radical break with their culture’s traditional gender roles than did their European contemporaries by actually taking up arms.” This was absolutely unheard of and definitely not expected. It was allowed only out of desperation since the Russian military needed all the forces it could muster. Never before had women risen up to fight for their country in such an organized fashion. World War One really challenged the status quo for women because it threw them into new territories and gave them far more

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