How Did The Vietnam War Affect Women

Women were a heavy presence in the Vietnam war. While 1/3 of the men in the Vietnam were drafted; most of the women volunteered. Many women wanted to escape having to settle down and get married and some had something to prove to their families. While others just wanted to help their country. 90% of the women were nurses, but they were also air traffic controllers, physicians, intelligence officers, clerks, among the positons. In the 1960’s, American women took a role and supported their country in many different ways.

The Vietnam war was an absolutely brutal time in American history. The war lasted for the majority of the 1960s and left many young men dead. The short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and the film Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam give us just a glance into the war by giving using the three themes of fear, pressures, and blame/guilt to embody the concept of war and how it absolutely changes a person. War not only destroys countries, but it destroys people.

Problem that the Vietnamese war veterans faced was the psychological effects which was very common for Vietnam veterans to have. The main cause of this is because it was different compared to other wars in the past like the condition that the soldiers were in. Studies has shown that a World War II soldiers experienced up to a total of 60 days under combat like conditions. A Vietnam infantryman endured on a comparable basis 300+ days therefore Vietnam veterans have more likely to develop psychological problems than a World War II veteran. (POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD), 2001)

The role of race and gender in the United States have been a constant social and cultural struggle, but for male and female service members in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War of author Heather Marie Stur’s book "Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era" when she focused more on the Cold War era policies. While her emphasis is primarily on Americans in Vietnam, the framing chapter on Madame Nhu as Orientalist dragon lady. Similarly, she considers the image of the "girl next door" in need of protection in relation to the actual positions of donut dollies nurses and WACs in

Introduction: In  order  to  stop  the  spread  of  communism,  America  joined  the  vietnam  war. Many  young  men  were  drafted  into  this  war,  with  no  other  options  but  to  go  or  to  be  arrested.  Many  were  terrified  to  go  into  the  war,  and  tried  to  flee  the  United  States.  The  main  problem  was  not  even  just  during  the  vietnam  war,  it  was  after  the  war  was  over  and  troops  were  sent  home.  This  problem was  known  as  shell  shock,  or  what  we  now  call  Post  Traumatic  Stress  Disorder  (PTSD).  Throughout  the  turmoil  and  pain  of  the  Vietnam  war,  many young  soldiers  were  emotionally  distraught  and  treated  poorly  in  their  return home,  each  with  their  own  load  to  bear.

The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in

The Vietnam War started in 1945, resulting in almost 60,000 American deaths and nearly two million Vietnamese deaths, according to Mintze. Years after combat countless Vietnam veterans suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder in every aspect of their lives (Price). Posttraumatic stress disorder is an illness that can happen to anyone who has gone through a horrifying experience. It has been documented in all forms of literature and films the brutality of the war and the side effects it came with. The history of Vietnam is quite long and winding and leaves one to question its purpose (Mintze).

Women have always played a part in war. "Independent surveys estimate that the number of women in war both civilian and non civilian during Vietnam was between 33,00 and 55,000". (Marshal 4-5) Women were generally treated as second class both while serving and when they returned home. The draw to the war for many women was wanting to become nurses but not having to take out large loans or cover costs of schooling.

As the Vietnam War began preventative measures were being taken to decrease the psychological impact of war on soldiers. Unfortunately as the war ended soldiers were often met with hostile demonstrations by anti-war activists and society offered little acceptance of Vietnam veterans even years after the war. This is when early studies on PTSD and the effects on military families began being documented. Early research showed that PTSD can have devastating, far-reaching consequences on the patients functioning, relationships,

During the Vietnam War, many challenges were faced by the Vietnamese people no matter what side they fought for. In Hayslip’s book and in the movie Regret to Inform, we are able to gain insight into some of the struggles the women faced during the war. The men went to war and left the women with nothing but a number of challenges. Problems arose because the women were being abused and tortured. To make matters worse, a lot of the women had to deal with more difficulties after the war was over. These are just a few of the struggles that women had to face during and after the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War was a violent and costly war that needed many men and women to fight for its cause. A lot of these brave men and women were either killed or injured and did not gain the respect they deserved until after the war. Many had to quit school, leave their family behind, and risk being killed or injured . Within many of the people who fought for the war were women. Women played an important role as they served in the war as nurses or in the army.

“When I was in serious danger I was almost completely paralysed by fear, I remember sitting with a coffin (a fellow soldier) on the fire-step of a trench during an intense bombardment, when it seemed certain that we must be killed”(The Psychological Effects Of The Vietnam War). Our soldiers that we send to war to protect us against the countries trying to harm us are put into dangerous situations that affect them physically and mentally and leave them with permanent damage to their minds and bodies. The server damage that our military soldiers faced when returning from war is PTSD which stands for post traumatic stress disorder and is the most common disorder that returning soldiers are diagnosed with , but a more tragic diagnosis from war

The Vietnam War that was fought to reunite Vietnam under a communist rule did not just include men, but also women whom the majority was voluntary. Many women wanted to help out their country and save the men who were injured in battle. Men weren’t the only ones that had to overcome difficult situations. Women also had to go through tough training, nurse soldiers back to health, and suffer through the aftermath of the war.

Vietnamese women were very active during the Vietnam War between 1950 and 1974. Through the Vietnam War, women were able to get motivation and ideas to spark gender equality. Before, Vietnamese women were treated like second-class citizens to Vietnamese men due to a number of reasons, such as old Confucian traditions and oppressive husbands. These women did not question this way of life because of the deep rooted traditions of gender roles. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese women went through many social changes that helped generate ideas for gender equality. While some migrated to America in order to start new lives away from the war, others stayed back and

Vietnam was from 1954-1975 and was a conflict between France and Vietnam. The United States didn’t enter the war till 1961 and left the war in 1964. My grandfather later on married my grandmother in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. My grandfather left for Vietnam and I do not know the exact date that he left to go to war, because he does not really talk about the war. Which is why I will tell you the little I know about what happened to him in the war. My grandfather, Bill William Hanson, witnessed a lot in Vietnam, because he was a field medic during his time in Nam. From what I have heard form veterans and researched Nam was a brutal messy war where tons of American soldiers got slaughtered by the Vietcong. Field medics saw men get mowed down by bullets and the wounded get picked off, but those who survived were either brutally wounded or lost body parts which is better than dying. My father has said that my grandfather has many medals from the war, but he has only ever heard him talk about it once or twice only because my grandfather was drunk at the time. Most people suffer PTSD in internal ways that show externally to friends and family, but my grandfather just keeps it all in and refuses to talk about what happened during that brutal war. Which takes lots of will power to hold in and try to forget, because he watched men die, saw them torn up from gun shots and grenades, hear the moans of wounded men as they begged for someone to help them so that they could live to see their families again. PTSD affects a lot of veterans that have been