1-WWI+Post-War+Society+&+Culture

__**Gender, Family and the War**__

With the male population significantly out of the picture, many families had to face changes during the time of the Great War. Women had to step out of the household and move on to industrial jobs to help feed their families. Children had to deal with the absence of male figures during their childhood. Every member of the family had to toughen up and cope with the deaths and loses of uncles, dads, husbands, brothers, and sons. Though the ideologies and goals of both sides differed, this one aspect was universally similar. Every country and every person that was a part of the war effort faced all the same hardships.

In the case of women, although they did face hardships, in the long run the Great War helped liberate them. Prior to the war women were seen doing only domestic chores. Domestic serventry, teaching, and nursing were the usual jobs that women were seen in prior to the war. But the war needed workers and not dressmakers or sewers but hey needed work to help the war effort. Many women were sacked from their jobs are moved on to work in the office and the factory. Women started delivering coal, working as machine operators in naval factories, car drivers, and rail workers. Food production increased on the home front because food supplies from abroad decreased. So, in Britain 113, 000 women joined the Women’s land Army in 1917 to work as farmers. A mini revolution was starting to form. Women were even employed by the Armed Forces as storekeepers, clerical workers, administrative workers, ambulance drivers, and nurses. As they became more visible doing this work, they were seen to be doing something important.

Although women experienced somewhat of a liberation in the period that the war was going on, they limited their efforts to campaign for the vote during the time of the war. Suffragists and suffragettes paused their campaigning. For example in Britain, they played an important role in persuading young British men who were not in the army to join. They felt that even though their cause was important, the war and the men needed more attention and more help at the moment. But unfortunately the problems arised after the war ended. Women were expected to leave their jobs and return to the “women’s work.” A significant number of women left the work force. But it still left more women working in the office than before.

There were also some other social changes pertaining to women. Women being able to work allowed them to go out without a male chaperone. They smoked and wore make-up in public. They wore shorter skirts and shorter hair.

Life for children was greatly affected. They had to cope with being bought up with some of the major male figures in their family missing. So post war when many children found out that their fathers were killed. They had to step up and take responsibility in their family. They had to work in order to help feed their family. To many it was the case that they lost a father that they barely knew or had barely met. So for the next 90 years they lived with the talk of this hero and an expectation to live up to this heroism. In other cases children had to grow up with fathers who had been scarred by their experiences in the war. The women that had lost their husbands to the war had to find a job themselves and take care of the family or remarry. Many children had to deal with the second marriages of their mothers. They were told that because he is the new “breadwinner” of the family they had to be good to him and that he was the new father.

Works Cited "Impact of WWI on Women." //Impact of WWI on Women//. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. Winterman, Denise. "Children of the Great War." //BBC News//. BBC, 11 Sept. 2007. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. "Women on the Home Front in World War One." //BBC News//. BBC, n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013.