Women in WWI: From Home to Warfront - Essay Sample

Introduction

Women have had the chance in the military to serve in various responsibilities in the past. The United States, for example, was is total warfare efforts in world War 1. Each of its citizens had to assist in the war. It did not mean everyone had to fight. However, women worked in different positions. Many of the women were recruited into the YWCA and travelled overseas to assist the male fighters. It was a historical moment since, for the first time, women from all classes worked for hand in hand to help in the war (Carreiras, 2006). The Upper-class women created organizations that were of voluntary war as the lower-class and middle-class acted in the organizations as nurses or working in some men related positions.

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In 1941, WAC (Women's Army Corps) was later created, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the following two years made it a section of the US Army officially (Carreiras, 2006). Women acted as ground, air, and Service forces and performed every task from cryptography to radio equipment repairing. They became surgical and medical experts instead of being nurses. In 1978, the male and female forces were combined; hence WAC was disabled (Hendrickson, 2018).

Slowly, all service academies began to admit women, and in 1977, basic training was integrated (Hendrickson, 2018). A group of 119 women from the former group WAC (at West Point) were the first female group of cadets and 62 of them in 1980 were able to graduate as second lieutenants (Carreiras, 2006).

The Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule in 1994 stated that "Service members are eligible to be assigned to all positions for which they are qualified, except that women shall be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground" (Gulabovska, & Leeson, 2014). The rule was rescinded in 2015 by Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense. Jim Mattis (the Defense Secretary in 2018) said that "the jury is still out" when questioned if or not the integration of the females into the infantry is fruitful since like a few numbers of them to get comprehensive information from (Gulabovska, & Leeson, 2014).

Conclusion

In conclusion, women have taken their responsibility to the higher standards and are proving themselves every day. Some women have done missions that were thought to be of the male gender only but proven the whole world wrong. They are the kind of people we all appreciate and thank you to all the military women in service and those who have retired.

References

Carreiras, H. (2006). Gender and the military: Women in the armed forces of western democracies. Routledge.

Gulabovska, M., & Leeson, P. (2014). Why are women better decoders of nonverbal language?. Gender Issues, 31(3-4), 202-218.

Hendrickson, M. (2018). Lynn Dumenil. The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I; Elizabeth Cobbs. The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers.