Transcript Women in WW1

Women During WWI
Before the War
-Seen for “traditional” roles
and duties.
-Recognized as objects of
beauty, not for what they did.
WWI Was a turning point For
Women
Men head overseas
 Women fill the void

Women are forced/welcomed into
the Workforce
Help win the war (work in munitions
factories)
 Feed their families (earn some money)

Women’s New Roles
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Emergency war jobs,
phone operators,
telegraphers and
stenographers, Rail
Road Workers,
Military supplies
Welders, fitters,
machinists, riveters
Read pg.97 “Working
A Munitions Factory”
Paid ½ men’s wages
War At Home

Woman can help fight the war at home;
– Conserve coal, fuel, food, clothing, money
– Prepare items for war (cloths, blanket, etc)
 This is done through Peer and Media pressure
 Knit socks, scarves, balaclavas, pillows, sheets,
flannel shirts etc.
Propaganda
Woman’s Land
Army
With sons and husbands
away, women grouped
together and were paid
to farm.
 Hard labour, as tractors
and fuel were saved for
the war effort.
 Women also would raise
money for the war effort.
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Women on the front lines- Nurses
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VAD, Voluntary Aid Detachment
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FANY, Fist aid nurses Yeomanry
- drove ambulances
- bathed patients
- removed bodies
- soup kitchens
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2000 women enlisted in Canadian Armed
forces as nurses
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1000 Canadian Women were employed
by the Royal Air Force as truck drivers,
mechanics and ambulance drivers.
NURSING CONTINUED
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A military hospital, taken
around Christmas time in
1914
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Often overcrowded and
understaffed during WWI
Not all glamorous
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“We slept in our clothes and cut our hair
short so that it would tuck inside our caps.
Dressing simply meant putting on our
boots. There were times when we had to
scrape the lice off with the blunt edge of a
knife and our cloths stuck to us” Elizabeth
de T’Saecales, nurse on front line
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Nurse were 16+
THE STORY OF THE
LLANDOVERY CASTLE
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a hospital ship assigned to the Canadian service and full
of nursing sisters was torpedoed on the night of June
27th,1918
234 lost their lives, including 14 Nursing Sisters
another major disaster took place when the Germans
bombed the Canadian hospitals at France.
All in all, 56 nursing sisters were killed during WW1
TRAGEDY FOR WOMEN IN WWI
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“...within 10 minutes of being struck, the Llandovery
Castle went to the bottom, and for nearly two hours the
enemy submarine, in an apparent attempt to destroy all
evidence of this breach of the Geneva Convention,
systematically shelled or tried to ram and sink lifeboats
and wreckage on which helpless victims floated...”
In Summary
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WW1 turning point for women
1. Work in factories
2. Homefront war effort
3. Nurses on front lines
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Women start to emerge from male-dominated society
Earn right to vote in 1918
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Answer questions 1-3 on page 98
Quebec Premier, Henri Bourassa
“It is the introduction of feminism in
its most noxious guise, the voter
women, who would soon spon the
man-woman, that hybrid and
repungnant monster who wil kill the
mother-women and the womanwomen.”