New Roles for Women in WW1

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School

Oregon State University, Corvallis *

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Course

549-U

Subject

History

Date

Oct 30, 2023

Type

doc

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Uploaded by MasterRockOstrich29

New Roles for Women World War I brought other great changes, especially to the lives of Canadian women. As soon as the war began, hundreds of Canadian women volunteered to work overseas as nurses or ambulance drivers. Many worked in field hospitals just behind the front-line trenches. One operating room nurse wrote in a letter home, "We ... had 291 operations in ten nights, so that will give you a fair idea of a week's work." Women also played an important part in the war effort at home. With the general shortage of labour in Canada, the number of women employed in industry rose dramatically. Thirty thousand Canadian women worked in munitions factories and other war industries. These jobs in heavy industry would have been considered unsuitable for women before 1914. Working conditions were difficult and sometimes dangerous. Women also drove buses and streetcars. They worked in banks, on police forces, and in civil service jobs. In wartime, there were few men left to work on the farms. Women on the farms brought in the harvests and city women were also recruited to go out and help. Groups of women of all ages met regularly to knit socks for the soldiers and to roll bandages. They arranged many of the card games, dances, and variety shows that helped fund the parcels sent to the troops. The Struggle for Women's Rights It was during World War I that an important step forward was taken in Canada for women's rights. At the beginning of the twentieth century, women in many countries had begun to organize themselves to gain the right to vote. Members of this movement in Canada were called suffragists . Nellie McClung was a suffragist and one of Canada's great social reformers. She wrote, "Certainly women belong in the home, but not 24 hours a day. They should have exactly the same freedom as men." When World War I broke out, it helped to prove that Nellie McClung was right. Women did jobs once performed only by men. The war brought women together in volunteer organizations and employment. They began to share ideas and work for political equality with men. They also took active roles in journalism and campaigned for better public health, working conditions, and wages. They pushed for equal opportunities in careers such as medicine and law, and for the right to own property. Suffragists campaigned enthusiastically for women's suffrage (the right to vote). Their leaders included Dorothy Davis in British Columbia, Margaret Gordon in Ontario, Emily Murphy and Alice Jamieson in Alberta, and the dynamic Nellie McClung in Manitoba. The first breakthrough for women's suffrage came in Manitoba. In 1916, women were given the right to vote in that province. Within months, Saskatchewan and Alberta also granted women suffrage. Ontario and British Columbia followed suit the next year. But the main goal was to win the right to vote in federal elections. In the federal election of December 1917, the Wartime Elections Act granted the vote to the mothers, sisters, and wives of soldiers in the Armed Forces. Canadian nurses serving in the Forces could also vote. By the time the war had ended, the right to vote in federal elections had been extended to almost all women in over the age of 21.

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