Social Studies 20-1
Date: _____________
Name: ___________________
Group One – Women in the “Total War” Economy
Directions: Read the following passages and then answer the following questions. Make sure at least one
of your group members writes the answers, so that they can be shared later on in class during discussion.
1) “Women’s contribution to the War Effort” by historian Gail Braybon
"It was very important to them that they were actually supporting the war effort, although lots of them
didn't really think much about what the war was about. They knew that their friends, relations, husbands,
sons were abroad. They were dying. There was a shell shortage. And they felt they really could do
something to support the war effort. It was very exciting for a lot of them. There were several big
explosions in various [munitions] factories around the country, the biggest one being Silvertown, and
women were killed. It's very difficult to know quite how many women were killed because all this was
subject to censorship during the war.”
“… The minute you actually have ordinary men volunteering to go abroad and to die for their country, it's
worse because they didn't want to go and die for their country but they had to. It's quite different for their
families. These are not women who've married soldiers; they're women who've married ordinary men, and
their men are taken away to fight.”
"Women knew that they were important to the war. The whole atmosphere of the war was also quite
different from earlier wars. Its scale meant that it affected food supplies. It affected supplies of all kinds
of goods in this country. It was quite obvious that women had to fulfill a new role in all sorts of jobs or
the war couldn't have been fought.”
"I think the way they actually coped with the fact they were making weapons of death varied from woman
to woman. Some of them just cut it off from their home experience. They didn't want to think about it.
Others actually felt they were making things that would bring the war to a close much faster."
Guiding Questions
1) How did different women react to their experience, as their husbands, male relatives and friends
volunteered or were conscripted to fight in the “Great War”? Imagine yourself in the same
Social Studies 20-1
Date: _____________
Name: ___________________
position, forced to support a conflict that separates you from large parts of your community and
family.
2) How was World War One different from earlier wars? Why were women a major part of the
economy for the first time?
Source: (http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/historian/hist_braybon_01_women.html)
2) “Women and WWI - Women in the Workforce: Temporary Men” by Sara Martin
As the main historian of women's work, Gail Braybon, claims, for many women the war was "a
genuinely liberating experience" that made them feel useful as citizens but that also gave them the
freedom and the wages only men had enjoyed so far. Approximately 1,600,000 women joined the
[British] workforce between 1914 and 1918 in government departments, public transport, the post office,
as clerks in business, as land workers and in factories, especially in the dangerous munitions factories,
which were employing 950,000 women by Armistice Day (as compared to 700,000 in Germany).
In general, women did very well, surprising men with their ability to undertake heavy work and
with their efficiency. By the middle of the war they were already regarded as a force to be proud of, part
of the glory of Britain. However, their entrance into the workforce was initially greeted with hostility …
because male workers worried that women's willingness to work for lower wages would put them out of
work.
The women employed in munitions factories, popularly known as “munitionettes” have became the
most visible face of the woman worker in WWI, though doubt remains as to whether their motivation
was patriotic or simply economic. The factories they manned had been seized by Lloyd George's
government [British Prime Minister during WWI] and he also caused suspension of all trade union
activities in them. Munitionettes produced 80% of the weapons and shells used by the British Army
and daily risked their lives working with poisonous substances without adequate protective clothing or
the required safety measures.
The public recognition and sympathy that the 'canaries' (thus nicknamed for the yellow tinge that
skin exposed to sulphur acquired) received could not make up for their work conditions. Leading tradeunionist Mary MacArthur, Secretary since 1903 of the Women's Trade Union League, led an energetic
campaign to demand they were paid as much as the men employed in the same industry - the women only
got half the men's wages - but by the end of the war the proportion was roughly still the same.
It's hard to say whether women workers understood from the beginning that their employment
could only be temporary but so it was. The same situation was repeated in the main belligerent countries:
women were dismissed back home to make room for the returning veterans, only in some cases their
efforts were thanked with the right to vote. There are, besides, disagreements among historians,
depending on whether they call themselves feminist or not, as to how much resentment this return home
generated.
Source: (http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_four.htm)
Social Studies 20-1
Date: _____________
Name: ___________________
Guiding Questions
1) What types of employment did women soon find themselves in? Which of these fields do you
think women would have never been allowed in, given typical circumstances in peace time?
2) What challenges did women face in the workforce? Think of their workplace and their new
roles as workers.
3) Why would women be dismissed from their jobs, following the return of their male
counterparts? Were they not proven to be as efficient and capable of doing hard labour as
men?
4) Do you think this change would dramatically alter male perspectives on women? If so, to
what extent? How long would it take for this attitude to spread throughout society?
Social Studies 20-1
Date: _____________
Name: ___________________
Group Two – Political Change and Propaganda
Directions: Examine the following World War One posters and answering the accompanying questions.
At least one member should act as the scribe, recording the answers for everyone else.
(1)
(2)
1) U.S. Army Recruitment Poster, 1917
Guiding Questions: a) Who does the giant ape represent? b) His female victim? c) The club
of the “mad brute” has kultur written on it (German for culture). What do you think the U.S.
government is trying to say about Germans, or their society in general?
2) British Recruitment Poster, 1914
Guiding Questions: a) Who do the women and young boy represent? b) Why would men
need to be reassured of female support for the cause? c) Would this pressure men in anyway?
Social Studies 20-1
Date: _____________
Name: ___________________
(3)
(4)
3) Canadian Poster, unknown date
Guiding Questions: a) What is meant by “We are saving you, you save food?” b) How would
the warring countries of the world save food for their soldiers? c) How does the poster
accomplish its goal? What response would readers have after seeing it?
4) Canadian Poster, unknown date
Guiding Questions: a) Who are being compared in the poster? b) What values and
perspectives are being portrayed? c) What do you think Victory Bonds are? What are they
used for?
Source: (http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/vexhibit/warpost/english/posters.htm)
Women, the Vote and the Great War
“Among the combatants, women were in some cases given the vote towards the end of the
war or after Armistice (Russia, 1917; Germany, 1918; US, 1919) but in France and Italy they
had to wait until 1945 to see this right acknowledged despite the fact that, at least in France,
feminist suffragists (women for their gender getting the vote) were very active. Besides, the
Social Studies 20-1
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Name: ___________________
enfranchising of women over 30 in Britain did not really benefit the young women of any
class who'd born the brunt of most war-related activities. In the USA, President Woodrow
Wilson signed the US 19th Amendment, ratified by Congress in 1920, which enfranchised
American women as a way of thanking them for their readiness to help in the war effort.
Paradoxically, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives (1917) and member
of Congress (up to 1919) was the Republican feminist pacifist Jeannette Rankin, who voted
both against participation in WWI and WWII. Canadian women were thanked in the same
way in 1917 for the same reason; strangely enough, married Canadian men couldn't enlist
without their spouses' written permission, which made Canadian married women the object
of a singular pro-war campaign. German women got the vote in 1918 as a result of the
revolution that left the socialists at the front of the post-Armistice Weimar Republic. "In
Germany", he notes, "when the SPD leader August Bebel introduced a motion for female
suffrage into the Reichstag for the first time ever (in 1895) he justified it simply 'in the name
of the legal equality of the sexes'." When the revolution did happen in 1918, SPD leaders,
though, "saw the granting of the vote to women largely as a means of pacifying the masses
and stealing the thunder of the [Communists].”
Guiding Questions: a) Why would countries grant women the vote after the war? b) What
changed to bring about different attitudes in regards to female ability to function in social and
political life? c) With Britain, Italy and France restricting or limiting women’s right to vote,
to what degree did things actually change in regards to women?”
“Burgfrieden—literally "fortress peace" or "castle peace" but more accurately "party truce"—
is a German term used for the political truce the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the
other political parties agreed to during World War I. The trade unions refrained from striking,
the SPD voted for war credits in the Reichstag and the parties agreed not to criticize the
government and its war. There were several reasons for the Burgfrieden politics: the Social
Democrats believed it was their patriotic duty to support the government in war; they were
afraid of government repression should they protest against the war; they feared living under
an autocratic Russian Czar more than the German constitutional monarchy and its Kaiser;
and they hoped to achieve political reforms after the war.”
“The French had a similar situation called L'union sacrée (French for Sacred Union), where
opposition parties pledged their support to the government, so as to aid in the war effort, for
the glory of France.”
Guiding Questions: a) What does an agreement by almost all opposition politicians not to
counter government activity say about social values at the time? b) What secondary purposes
did they perhaps have?