What Is The Role Of Women In Vietnam War

One of the most important roles that women played, were the increasing large amount of female soldiers fighting in the war. These roles gave women the right to work and serve in armed forces. The jobs that women took part in during this time period made a huge difference in the war, and in turn, WW2 helped expand women’s

In addition to all the roles patriotic women played in helping America emerge victorious, one of the biggest methods was nursing. Battle nurses were organized into army ranks, the highest rank having been ‘matron’. Their necessity was so that the ratio for wounded soldiers to nurses was 10:1. Even George Washington himself had found female nurses indispensable--he demanded they be present to help nurse soldiers back to health on and off the battlefield (National History Education Clearinghouse).

Over 5000 volunteer nurses’ north and south served in military hospitals during the Civil War. Nurses were of all sorts and came from all over. Women wanted to be involved in this national struggle in any way they could. They did not want to stay home and play their traditional domestic roles that social convention and minimal career opportunities had confined the majority of their sex to. Many women thought of nursing as an extension of their home duties, almost like taking care of “their boys.” They recall the Civil War as a time when their work as nurses made a difference. It gave them an opportunity to prove they had the ability and courage to help.

From 1861 to 1865, “between 2,000 to 5,000 women” volunteered to serve as nurses in military hospitals during the Civil War. Nurses from all over came to lend a hand during this devastating time. Clara Barton, Annie Etheridge, Dorothea Dix, Susie King Taylor, and Helen Gilson were just a few of the many nurses who volunteer their services to the war effort. Women wanted to be involved and help out as much as they could. Most women did not want to be at home - doing their traditional domestic work. Many women thought that helping out during the Civil War as nurses was an addition to doing their home duties. Women also believed that working as a nurse helping soldiers during the war would make a difference in how people viewed them. Being a

During the Civil War, women helped soldiers by rolling bandages and creating care packages, as well as assisting in other small, though vital, tasks. World War I followed this pattern. But never had women’s aid included assisting with tasks traditionally accomplished by men, until World War II. Women had been told all through the Great Depression, “Let the men have the jobs! Stay at home!” and women, for the most part, had listened. Now, suddenly, the men were

Prior to WWI, women were only allowed to be a military nurse but even then, they weren 't actually enlisted. They were taking care of the men during the war and wasn’t given no type of recognition for doing so. Women 's roles

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

When mixing the push for equality between the sexes, the military is no exception. Traditionally, women have helped on the battlefield by providing medical help. Until the 1950s, women's primary career option in the military was medical nurse. The Korean War encouraged female nurses to interact on the ground in combat as support units to the combat arms branches. Real change started when, in 1969 and '72 when the Air Force, Army and Navy opened up the

As women were finally recognised for their contributions as nurses and medical aids, they were provided with a sense of importance and their position in society was elevated. Without the women who courageously partook in these organisations, the casualty rates would have been much higher, so the services that these women provided were undeniably invaluable. Because women played such an instrumental role in World War 1, the war became a time when women's roles that were previously thought to be mundane were finally acknowledged and respected, bringing a whole new level to women's empowerment.

Are the roles of women important in our military? Women during WWII weren’t as respected as of this day in age. Women were not allowed to fight. Their jobs were to take care of the house in children but after all the men got sent away the women had to get jobs. Even got jobs as nurses caring for the injured. We will be discussing the roles of women the the book The Things They Carried and the impact that they had.

Red Cross had gotten many women volunteers to help serve. Red Cross volunteers did many jobs like”…..reading and writing letters for wounded or illiterate soldiers, unearthing information about family members during breakdowns in communication, organizing dances for servicemen, and simply making wartime more bearable both at home and overseas.” By the end of this war, women’s place in the world had changed for the better. They were respected more among others for the things that they did. “….many American women realized that the war had changed not only the world- it had changed them as

Karen Turner and author’s collaborator, Phan Thanh Haou, in this heartbreaking book, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam, explore the abyss between Vietnamese and Americans cultures and examine the consequences of war in Vietnamese women through several interviews. The author offers an array of women stories with different perspectives, understanding and attempts to understand and leave an open-ended question, why “When war strikes close to home, even women must fight.” Turner feels these women’s stories sincerely. She is an active participant in these conversations and she is willing to grow with them, as a woman.

The sexist stereotypes of men and women greatly enforced their roles in the Vietnam War. While women were not included in the draft and protected from war’s brutality and tragedies, men were forced from their homes to be enlisted in the army. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a platoon is comprised of struggling young men whose lives are challenged each day. On the other hand, women are blissfully living in the states, providing complete security and comfort, both of which the soldiers are not able to acquire. According to society, women are supposedly the homebound sex, too fragile and moral to be exposed to the world outside their own, and unable to empathize with the emotional baggage that the soldiers carry.

As more traveled to America, Vietnamese women were no longer seen as immigrants, but instead as refugees. This shows that women weren’t seen as people, but as helpless foreigners. Because of this opposition, Vietnamese women became intrigued by the way American women fought for equality. However, Vietnam was not very fond of the Americans during this time. Because of this, Vietnamese men did not like the idea of their women going overseas: “They’d rather see their daughters find jobs with Vietnamese men because most of them always looked down on the Vietnamese women who worked for Americans.” Vietnamese women were not only encouraged to stay in a war stricken Vietnam, but they were shunned for seeking or finding work by American men. This played into the long oppression of women and the idea that they should stay home, take care of the family, and listen to their male superior. Finally, there were still gender roles that were defined throughout the world. Women could not catch a break no matter where they moved. Before their migration to America, they already had the long standing notion of women being inferior to men. This made it harder for women to break the status quo in America, even though they knew it was wrong. However, these repressive causes only made Vietnamese women want equality even more.

Women, regardless of the opposition, were determined to support their armies and their beliefs even on the battlefield. The North and South armies of the country were fighting without proper organization from their respective governments, leading women to volunteer to help their men in whatever manner they could. Contributing to the war effort, women were “responsible for much of the clothing, feeding, and nursing of the soldiers.”18 Women would cook and do the laundry for the soldiers, working in camps away from the battlefield. Other women would provide comfort for the dying soldiers, nurturing the wounded and staying with the men who were dying until their last moments. Their efforts were to offset the fact that the wounded men were separated from their loved ones and “represented domestic tranquility in the midst of armed conflict.”19 Women were not prohibited from nursing injured soldiers because it was “not yet a profession requiring special training…care of the sick and injured was traditionally a female skill”20. Nursing was not the only important contribution that women provided during the war. They also worked within their communities to make up for the men who had left to fight in the war, managing homes and plantations,