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Womens rsponsiblities during world war one
Theory of women's role in the civil war era
Womens rsponsiblities during world war one
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In the years before the Civil War, the lives of American women were mostly shaped by a set of ideals that historians call “the Cult of True Womanhood.” As the men’s work moved farther away from the home and into shops, offices, and factories, which made the household become a new kind of place: a private, and feminized domestic sphere. “True women” devoted their lives to creating a clean, comfortable, and nurturing home for their husbands and for their children. During the Civil War, per contra, American women turned their attentions to the world apart from the home. Thousands of women from the North and South involved themselves in volunteer brigades and they signed up to work as nurses. This was the first time in Americans history that women played …show more content…
Most people that fought in the war were known as “citizen soldiers” with no prior military training. Some of the women that were in uniform were discovered. This often happened after they were wounded in battle and sent to a field hospital. Clara Barton for example discovered Mary Galloway’s true identity while she was retreating a chest wound that Galloway had suffered during the Battle of Antietam. Most women that were discovered usually left with little to no punishment, few women were unlucky and faced imprisonment. Discussion and Conclusion During the Civil war, women faced a host of new and different duties and responsibilities. these wartime contributions helped expand many women’s ideas about what their “proper” place should be. Women played many different roles in the Civil War. They did not just sit idly and wait they went and supported the war effort, some as nurses and aids and others took a more upfront approach and secretly enlisted in the army, and served as spies and smugglers. Whatever the duties were these new jobs redefined women traditional roles as mothers, housewives, and they were made an important part of the war
Great people often arise from unlikely places. During the civil war women were barred from serving in the army; however, women did sometimes disguise themselves as men and enlisted in both the Confederate and Union armies. During the Civil War years of 1861 to 18-65, soldiers under arms mailed countless letters home from the front. There are multiple accounts of women serving in military units during the Civil War, but a majority of these incidents are extremely hard to verify. Nevertheless, there is the one well-documented incident of the female Civil War soldier by the name of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman.
Abolitionism was around before the 1830’s but, it became a more radical during this time. Before 1830, Benjamin Lundy ran a anti-slavery newspaper. In 1829, Lundy hired William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison went on to publish his own newspaper the Liberator.
In the 1840’s, most of American women were beginning to become agitated by the morals and values that were expected of womanhood. “Historians have named this the ’Cult of True Womanhood’: that is, the idea that the only ‘true’ woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family” (History.com). Voting was only the right of men, but women were on the brink to let their voices be heard. Women pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott wrote eleven resolutions in The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments; this historical document demanded abolishment of any laws that authorized unequal treatment of women and to allow for passage of a suffrage amendment.
Most of their work became invisible and the women were referred to as amateurs. Many historians consider this time after the war as gender amnesia because everyone after the war forgot all the women did. Women were credited for their contributions. This amnesia caused the women to lose the little inclusion that they had and not many fought this because of the urge to go back to normalcy (Berkin). If the need to become a strong and steady nation had not meant a push back to normalcy, the women may not have been set back as much in terms of inclusion.
In the book Women in the Civil War, by Mary Massey, the author tells about how American women had an impact on the Civil War. She mentioned quite a few famous and well-known women such as, Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton, who were nurses, and Pauline Cushman and Belle Boyd, who were spies. She also mentioned black abolitionists, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, feminist Susan B. Anthony, and many more women. Massey talks about how the concept of women changed as a result of the war. She informed the readers about the many accomplishments made by those women. Because of the war, women were able to achieve things, which caused for them to be viewed differently in the end as a result.
After the success of antislavery movement in the early nineteenth century, activist women in the United States took another step toward claiming themselves a voice in politics. They were known as the suffragists. It took those women a lot of efforts and some decades to seek for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In her essay “The Next Generation of Suffragists: Harriot Stanton Blatch and Grassroots Politics,” Ellen Carol Dubois notes some hardships American suffragists faced in order to achieve the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Along with that essay, the film Iron-Jawed Angels somehow helps to paint a vivid image of the obstacles in the fight for women’s suffrage. In the essay “Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor during World War II,” Ruth Milkman highlights the segregation between men and women at works during wartime some decades after the success of women suffrage movement. Similarly, women in the Glamour Girls of 1943 were segregated by men that they could only do the jobs temporarily and would not able to go back to work once the war over. In other words, many American women did help to claim themselves a voice by voting and giving hands in World War II but they were not fully great enough to change the public eyes about women.
Clara Barton’s ‘The Women Who Went to the Field’ describes the work of women and the contribution they made on the civil war battlefield in 1861. Barton highlights the fact that when the American Civil War broke out women turned their attention to the conflict and played a key role throughout as nurses. Therefore, at first glance this poem could in fact be seen as a commemoration of the women who served in the American Civil War as its publications in newspapers and magazines in 1892 ensured that all Civil War veterans were honoured and remembered, including the women. However, when reading this poem from a feminist perspective it can be seen instead as a statement on the changing roles of women; gender roles became malleable as women had the
In “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” Jacquelyn Hall explains that future generations would need to grapple with the expenses of commercialization and to expound a dream that grasped financial equity and group unanimity and also women’s freedom. I determined the reasons for ladies ' insubordination neither reclassified sexual orientation parts nor overcame financial reliance. I recollected why their craving for the trappings of advancement could obscure into a self-constraining consumerism. I estimated how a belief system of sentiment could end in sexual peril or a wedded lady 's troublesome twofold day. None of that, in any case, should cloud a generation’s legacy. I understand requirements for a standard of female open work, another style of sexual expressiveness, the section of ladies into open space and political battles beforehand cornered by men all these pushed against conventional limitations even as they made new susceptibilities.
In a 1944 magazine article, Eleanor Roosevelt claimed that American “women are serving actively in many ways in this war [World War II], and they are doing a grand job on both the fighting front and the home front.”1 While many women did indeed join the workforce in the 1940s, the extent and effects of their involvement were as contested during that time as they are today. Eleanor Roosevelt was correct, however, in her evaluation of the women who served on the fighting front. Although small in number due to inadequate recruitment, the women who left behind their homes and loved ones in order to enlist in the newly established Women’s Auxiliary Army Corp (WAAC), and later the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), were deemed invaluable to the war effort.
When all the men were across the ocean fighting a war for world peace, the home front soon found itself in a shortage for workers. Before the war, women mostly depended on men for financial support. But with so many gone to battle, women had to go to work to support themselves. With patriotic spirit, women one by one stepped up to do a man's work with little pay, respect or recognition. Labor shortages provided a variety of jobs for women, who became street car conductors, railroad workers, and shipbuilders. Some women took over the farms, monitoring the crops and harvesting and taking care of livestock. Women, who had young children with nobody to help them, did what they could do to help too. They made such things for the soldiers overseas, such as flannel shirts, socks and scarves.
When the American Civil War began on April 12th, 1861, over 3 million Union and Confederate soldiers prepared for battle. Men from all over America were called upon to support their side in the confrontation. While their battles are well documented and historically analyzed for over a hundred years, there is one aspect, one dark spot missing from the picture: the role of women in the American Civil War. From staying at home to take care of the children to disguising themselves as men to fight on the battlefield, women contributed in many ways to the war effort on both sides. Though very few women are recognized for their vital contributions, even fewer are.
The article was published on February 6, 1943 in the midst of World War II. Women had become an asset to the war effort and were then considered "At Home Soldiers" or "Riveters". They worked in the factories constructing submarines for the Navy, planes for the Air Force, and became medics.
Women’s role in society changed quite a bit during WWI and throughout the 1920s. During the 1910s women were very short or liberty and equality, life was like an endless rulebook. Women were expected to behave modestly and wear long dresses. Long hair was obligatory, however it always had to be up. It was unacceptable for them to smoke and they were expected to always be accompanied by an older woman or a married woman when outing. Women were usually employed with jobs that were usually associated with their genders, such as servants, seamstresses, secretaries and nursing. However during the war, women started becoming employed in different types of jobs such as factory work, replacing the men who had gone to fight in the war in Europe. In the late 1910s The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had been fighting for decades to get the vote for women. As women had contributed so much to the war effort, it was difficult to refuse their demands for political equality. As a result, the Nineteenth Amendment to the constitution became law in 19...
Women were not only separated by class, but also by their gender. No woman was equal to a man and didn’t matter how rich or poor they were. They were not equal to men. Women couldn’t vote own business or property and were not allowed to have custody of their children unless they had permission from their husband first. Women’s roles changed instantly because of the war. They had to pick up all the jobs that the men had no choice but to leave behind. They were expected to work and take care of their homes and children as well. Working outside the home was a challenge for these women even though the women probably appreciated being able to provide for their families. “They faced shortages of basic goods, lack of childcare and medical care, little training, and resistance from men who felt they should stay home.” (p 434)
During the Civil War, women began to feel like part of the work force, but along with it, was the downfall of being considered "service workers", which is very similar to being a servant. Nurses had to suffer through much conformity, as they had to wait hand and foot on male patients, while at the same time being scrutinized by their male "overseers". These issues that nurses faced in the nineteenth century, continue even to this day, with a little more ease, but we are still driven by a patriarchal society that just isn't ready to let go. Through the works of Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Perkins Gillman, one can see the hardships that Nineteenth century women were faced with when it came to working. These stories bring to light the fact that, by overcoming oppression, through the strength and desire that leads to resistance, women have been able to achieve self-reliance, which makes their "service work" considered to have with it, an achieved independence. These stories show us the struggles that women faced in the nin...