Women in World War I 

 

Soldiers/Military    The Hello Girls: Women Telephone Operators   Female Yeomen (Yeomanettes) in the U.S. Navy   The Golden 14 (Black Women Yeomen)     Maria Bochkareva and All-Women Russian battalions (World History)	Spies & Espionage    Mata Hari    Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell	Nurses & Medicine     Salvation Army Doughnut Lassies   Red Cross   Patriotic League   YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association)   Mary Borden: American nurse who served on the Franco-Belgian front
Workers and Owners    Factory Workers   Women's Land Army     Munitionettes or Canary Girls (England)	Political Activists    Jeannette Rankin   Rosa Luxemburg and Die Internationale    Women's Peace Movement   African American Women during the War	Science/Tech Pathfinders    CROSS-LINK: Marie Curie, Scientist and Twice Noble Prize Recipient   Lady Helena Gleichen and Women Scientists

  

World War I propaganda poster, Edward Penfield, 1918  

Topics on the Page

 

Overview of Women and the War

 

The Hello Girls: Women Telephone Operators

 

Female Yeomen in the U.S. Navy

 

Munitionettes in England

 

Jeannette Rankin and the Women's Peace Movement

 

Salvation Army Doughnut Lassies

 

Women in the United Kingdom

 

African American Women in the War

• Peters Sisters: War Poems (1919)

 

 

 Cross-Links 

 

•  Women in World War II

 

 

Overview of Women and the War 

 

Women in World War I from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Where Women Worked During World War I, Seattle General Strike Project, University of Washington

How Women Helped Win the Great War, U.S. Army

 

Book Review: Rosie's Mom: Forgotten Women Workers of the First World War

How War Changed the Role of Women in the U.S. from Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

 

 

 

The Hello Girls: Women Telephone Operators

 

Hello Girls of World War I

 

 100 Years On, the Hello Girls are Recognized for World War I Heroics

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joy Bright as a Yeoman (F) 1918

Female Yeomen in the United States Navy (Yeomanettes)

The Story of the Female Yeoman During the First World War, National Archives

 

• The Naval Act of 1916 opened the door to women volunteering in the U. S. Navy.
• 11,000 women served
• Designated Yeomen (F) for female yeoman. Served as radio operators, stenographers, messengers.
• Disbanded in 1919

The Navy Yeoman in World War 1

Yeoman (F) Uniform

I Was a Yeoman (F) is a first-person account of one's woman's experiences during the war

 

Female munitions workers manufacturing heavy artillery shells, 1917

 

Munitionettes (Female Munitions Workers in England)

The Muniitionettes

• 80% of the weapons and ammunition used by the British army were made by women

Women in the Munitions Industry

 

9 Women Reveal the Dangers of Working in a First World War Munitions Factory

 

12 Things You Didn't Know About Women in the First World War, Imperial War Museums

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeannette Rankin, February 1939

Jeannette Rankin and the Women's Peace Movement

 

Why Women's Peace Activism in World War I Matters Now, The Conversation (April 2, 2017)

 

Jeannette Who?

 

Jeannette Rankin's War

 

 

Nurses & Medicine

 

American Nurses in World War I: Underappreciated and Under Fire. PBS American Experience

 

Salvation Army Doughnut Lassies

 

Doughnut Girls: The Women Who Fried Doughnuts and Dodged Bombs on the Front Lines of World War I 

 

Donut Day History

 

 

Women in the United Kingdom

English women at work in the New Gun Factory in London 

Click here for a link about Women's Roles in WWI 

 

 Video on women (in UK) during WWI


For an article accompanied by images and a video of Women in WWI propaganda

A website dedicated to the Role of women in World War I

 

Check out this video about Flora Sandes the only British female to fight on the front lines in WWI!

 

 

 

 

Mata Hari

Mata Hari, 1915

Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and double agent working during the first world war. During World War I, Mata Hari became embroiled in a web of intrigue and espionage.

 

• She had relationships with several high-ranking military officials from various countries, including Germany, France, and Russia, and she allegedly used these relationships to gather and pass on information. She was accused of being a double agent and was arrested by the French authorities in 1917.

 

Mata Hari was put on trial for espionage and was found guilty. She was executed by a firing squad on October 15, 1917, at the age of 41.

 

• Her story has become the subject of numerous books, films, and plays, and she remains a symbol of femme fatale and intrigue. However, her guilt remains a topic of debate among historians and experts in the field of espionage.

 

Biography from PBS

 

 

Gertrude Bell

 

Gertrude Bell was a British woman involved in Arabic studies, who moved to intelligence gathering during World War I. She was an expert on the Middle East, with language skills, archaeology experience, and time spent in the region.

• Bell's role with British intelligence was not a spy in the stereotypical sense, but more in line with what a modern intelligence analyst would look like. In particular, she provided her expertise and drafted maps that would inform British movement in Iraq.

 

• After her work there, she would become an official member of the British Army as the Oriental Secretary, and was given awards by the British state. 

 

• After the war, her role diminished, but her profound expertise and efforts to pave a road for women in the British military makes her notable to this day.

 

Click here to read about female spies and intelligence officers in WWI. 

 

African American Women in the War

 

Black women contributions during WWI

 

• Administrators:
• Black women, later nicknamed The Golden Fourteen, served in the Muster Roll section in Washington, D.C. These women tracked naval personnel ship assignments, noting both changes in assignments and commands

 

• Drivers:

• Motor Corps drivers with the Red Cross and the National League for Women’s Service  

• Transported soldiers to military camps, hospitals, and canteens

 

 

•  Nurses:

• The American Red Cross resisted activating the approximately 1,800 African American nurses certified for service with the military until the end of the war, when the 1918 pandemic created a nurse shortage. Even then, only 18 Black nurses served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps stateside

• First Person account by Aileen Cole Stewart, one of the 18 black nurses here!