As Canada entered the Second World War, the nation felt the challenges of labour, struggling to meet military production quotas to provide supplies and troops to British forces and allies in Europe. Despite the King administration invoking The War Measures Act, the government was unable to maintain needed production due to a lack of manpower, minimal productive capacity and poor relations between unions and management. By 1941, the Canadian government recognized they needed to mobilize all available resources to keep the economy active. This meant utilizing the underlying source of labour in Canadian women, encouraging women to enter the workforce resulting in unprecedented numbers, and filling roles left vacant by men who had gone to fight …show more content…
Throughout the gruelling conditions and traumatizing encounters the women faced as military nurses, they were still constrained to strong societal expectations of femininity that hospital training schools and military routines maintained. The goal to maintain contemporary femininity versus masculinity, working closely with the military men they disciplined the nurses to embed their image as distinct "officers" and "ladies." Canadian nurses were the first women to be classified as military officers in 1904, but this was done so carefully to ensure that the women would never outrank or hold more authority than the men, creating specialized titles of nursing sisters and matrons for lower class positions. Despite the undeniable importance of the military nurses, the military was adamant that their positions were temporary, regardless of the wishes of the …show more content…
On the home front, the National Selective Service Women’s Division campaigned to recruit women, coming as a welcomed venture by Canadian citizens with more than 400,000 unemployed men and women following the Great Depression. The decision was focused on the tasks of contributing their efforts towards fighting the war and ensuring that the call for female labour was temporary, acting to secure the withdrawal of women from the industries once the war ended. Women travelled across provinces to reach Quebec and Ontario for the opportunity to work in the war plants but were met with deplorable working conditions which led to poor employee retention. The women sent to the plants by the National Selective Service dealt with limited transportation options, inadequate housing, poor quality meals, restrictions on recreation and negligence from the government agency, these inadequacies resulted in protests, transfer requests and women leaving the
When war broke out in 1914, the Australian Government raised the first Australian Imperial Force for overseas service. The nurses to staff the medical units, which formed an integral part of the AIF, were recruited from the Australian Army Nursing Service Reserve and from the civil nursing profession.
However, the overarching intent of this letter is to make sure women do not take on important jobs during the war because they are only fit to being mothers and wives. Finally, Document 7 shows the percentage of women in the workforce over a number of years. These statistics were polled directly before, during, and after World War I in France. As expected, there is a heightened number during the war, but the number drops lower after the war than it was before the war. This unpredicted decline can be blamed on the incredible animosity men have for any advance for
During the time of 1940-1945 a big whole opened up in the industrial labor force because of the men enlisting. World War II was a hard time for the United States and knowing that it would be hard on their work force, they realized they needed the woman to do their part and help in any way they can. Whether it is in the armed forces or at home the women showed they could help out. In the United States armed forces about 350,000 women served at home and abroad. The woman’s work force in the United States increased from 27 percent to nearly 37percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married woman worked outside the home. This paper will show the way the United States got the woman into these positions was through propaganda from
world war, where it plunged into the war as soon as the United Kingdom got involved, in the
During the war, women played a vital role in the workforce because all of the men had to go fight overseas and left their jobs. This forced women to work in factories and volunteer for war time measures.
The War Measures Act, which had been created for the protection and benefit of Canadian...
On March 15, 1965, large shipments of troops arrived in South Vietnam. These troops occupied the country until 1973. During this time, many men fought and died for the United States of America. The numerous nurses that operated on thousands of soldiers are often forgotten. The soldiers that the nurses operated on were usually blown apart and crippled for life. The nurses worked diligently to save these men. Even by working hard to save these men they were not recognized as army personnel by the public. The Vietnamese citizens and even the male American soldiers looked down upon the nurses. The United States did not acknowledge the nurses that served in the Vietnam War until 1993. The nurses that served in the Vietnam War, although commonly unrecognized, served as bravely as their soldier counterparts, and some suffered much of the same mental and physical distress.
The Vietnam War was the longest war ever fought by U.S. military forces. U.S. personnel were engaged from 1961 until 1973. Approximately 10,000 U.S. military women served in Vietnam during the war. Most were members of the Army, Navy, and Air Force Nurse Corps. All of the Army nurses were volunteers who attended a six-week basic training class, and then were assigned to one-year stunts in Vietnam hospitals and mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) units. Most of these nurses were fresh out of nursing school, some with less than six months of clinical experience. These nurses were not prepared for the physical and emotional wounds that they would have to heal.
Subsequently, women volunteered through national or local associations or by getting permission from a commanding officer (“Nursing”). In April 1861, Dorothea Dix assembled a collection of volunteer female nurses which staged a march on Washington, demanding that the government distinguish their desire to assist the Union’s wounded soldiers. She organized military hospitals for the care of all sick and wounded soldiers, aiding the head surgeons by supplying nurses and considerable means for the ease and aid of the suffering. After she recruited nurses; nursing was greatly improved and her nurses were taken care of under her supervision (Buhler-Wilkerson). During the Civil war, most nurses were women who took care of the ill and injured soldiers. Both male and female nurses have cared for the soldiers in every American war. The majority of nurses were recruited soldiers pressed into duty. Civil war nurses worked in hospitals, on the battlefield, and in their homes (Post). The first carnage of the war made it possible for nursing to become a professional occupation. The women who proved themselves as capable volunteers established nursing as an acceptable field of employment for women after the war. The contributions of the thousands of female nurses helped to alter the image of the professional nurse and changed American nursing from a male-dominated to a largely female profession (Woodworth). Clara Barton, one of the nurses who contributed to the Civil War, founded the American Red Cross, brought supplies and helped the battlefronts before formal relief organizations could take shape to administer such shipments (Buhler-Wilkerson). The religious orders given responded to the new opportunity for servicing the injured by sending t...
During the American Civil War, "More than twenty thousand women in the Union and Confederate states engaged in relief work…” (Schultz, 2004). These women had certain professional rights and responsibilities to uphold throughout the Civil War. They broke the common Victorian American tradition and volunteered to be Civil War nurses, something that astounded the nation (USAHEC.org). These battle aids nursed the wounded soldiers and performed other tasks to help the soldiers. However, these women were not accepted right away by male doctors in the hospitals. Some male doctors thought of women as useless (Barton, 1892) and that they "were intruding into their domain and using scarce resources," (Freemon, 1998). Despite the power struggle between the male doctors and women nurses, the women nurses were soon known as “The nurses, consolers, and saviours of men.” (Barton, 1892).
Due to the a sentence of working men's, women were suggested to do men’s work, such as making clothes for oversea men, filling bullets and shell bombs with materials, and many more occupations and works that were once the ‘privilege’ only to men. After WWI ended, women were forced to leave their occupation and return back to their life as typical ‘house maids’. This did not only cause the women’s anger and rebellion due to the fact that their jobs were taken away from them, but it also planted seeds deeply within women’s hearts of the consciousness of gender inequality. Before women in Canada had ever taken on jobs before, their lives were all about pleasing their men and baring, caring for their children. Women did not have a life of their own before the famous The Person’s case, led by Emily Murphy, Irene Marryat Parlby, Nellie Mooney McClung, Louise Crummy McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edward; however , that is to say after the women in the prairies had granted votes for them. To resume, the newly funded experience for the women due to their new jobs had sparked the courage and anger in them. This can also explain the year of women first received their rights to vote in 1916, barely two years after the outbreak of WWI. While women’s men were away fighting during WWI, votes were given to women during conscription so that the wives could vote in place of their husband.
The 1940s provided a drastic change in women’s employment rates and society’s view of women. With the end of the Depression and the United States’ entrance into World War II, the number of jobs available to women significantly increased. As men were being drafted into military service, the United States needed more workers to fill the jobs left vacant by men going to war. Women entered the workforce during World War II due to the economic need of the country. The use of Patriotic rhetoric in government propaganda initiated and encouraged women to change their role in society.
When all the men were across the ocean fighting a war for world peace, the home front soon found itself in a shortage for workers. Before the war, women mostly depended on men for financial support. But with so many gone to battle, women had to go to work to support themselves. With patriotic spirit, women one by one stepped up to do a man's work with little pay, respect or recognition. Labor shortages provided a variety of jobs for women, who became street car conductors, railroad workers, and shipbuilders. Some women took over the farms, monitoring the crops and harvesting and taking care of livestock. Women, who had young children with nobody to help them, did what they could do to help too. They made such things for the soldiers overseas, such as flannel shirts, socks and scarves.
In December 1941, the government conscripted single women aged 20-30 as auxiliaries to the Armed Forces, Civil Defense, or war industries… Government figures show that women’s employment increased during the Second World War from about 5.1 million in 1939 (26%) to just over 7.25 million in 1943 (36% of all women of working age). Forty six percent of all women aged between 14 and 59, and 90% of all able-bodied single women between the ages of 18 and 40 were engaged in some form of work or National Service by September 1943. (Anitha)
“Because there are so many different mental dispositions, one religion simply cannot serve, cannot satisfy all people.” – Rodger Kamenetz (The Jew in the Lotus)