Women roles in World War 2

Women contributes a lot during war time in many countries they the become the strength and inspiration of every nation while thier sons and husband are facing the enemies. World War II delivered destruction in all countries who are in war and women roles are very significant, they became men in their respective countries and provide support in different ways.

During World War I and World War II, women were called on, by necessity, to do work and to take on roles that were outside their traditional gender expectations.In Great Britain this was known as a process of "Dilution" and was strongly contested by the trade unions, particularly in the engineering and ship building industries. Women did, for the duration of both World Wars, take on jobs that were traditionally regarded as skilled "men's work". However, in accordance with the agreement negotiated with the trade unions, women undertaking jobs covered by the Dilution agreement lost their jobs at the end of the World War I.

United States of America

American women also saw combat during World War II, firstly as nurses in the Army Nurses Corps and United States Navy Nurse Corps during the Pearl Harbor attacks on 7 December 1941. The Woman’s Naval Reserve and United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve were also created for women performing auxiliary roles. In July 1943 a bill was signed making the Women's Army Corps an official part of the regular army, but not in combat units. In 1944 WAC’s arrived in the Pacific and were landing in Normandy on D-Day. During the war, 67 Army nurses and 16 Navy nurses were captured and spent three years as Japanese prisoners of war. 350,000 American women served during World War Two and 16 were killed in action. American women also performed many varieties of non-combat military service in special units such as the WAVES, Women's Army Corps, and Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Indeed World War II also marked milestones for women in the US military, Carmen Contreras-Bozak, who became the first Hispanic to join the WAC's, serving in Algiers under General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Minnie Spotted-Wolf the first female Native American woman to enlist in the United States Marines. In 1943, the first female officer of the United States Marine Corps was commissioned, and the first detachment of female marines was sent to Hawaii for duty in 1945. Women also joined the federal government in massive numbers during World War II. Nearly a million "government girls" were recruited for war work.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, women were essential to the war effort, in both civilian and military roles. The contribution by women to the civilian war effort in the United Kingdom was acknowledged with the use of the words "Home Front" to describe the battles that were being fought on a domestic level with rationing, recycling, and war work, such as in munitions factories and farms. Men were thus released into the military. Women were also recruited into non-combat military units such as the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS or "Wrens") and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) thus further releasing men into the frontline. Auxiliary services such as the Air Transport Auxiliary also recruited women.

In Britain, women were not recruited into regular combat units, but the Special Operations Executive (SOE) did. They were used as agents and radio operators in Nazi occupied Europe.

Soviet Union

The Second World War began in 1939 so many housewives joined the war effort and took over the men who joined the army’s jobs.

The most common job for women was in domestic service, which about one and a half million women worked. Some domestic servants lived in attics and worked long hours as cleaners, cooks or chamber maids. They would be typically paid £5 or £10 a year. Often domestic servants would get half a day off a week however some only got half a day a month. This style of work was very appealing to young girls as the schools leaving age was twelve and domestic service didn’t require a high level of education. Nine-hundred thousand women worked in textiles. The textile industry was a major employer of women as they could supervise the spinning and weaving machines as effectively as men. Pay was of course much lower for women than it was for men. Five-hundred thousand worked in the ‘sweat trades’ were they would work excessive hours of work for very low pay in unsanitary conditions. The worst examples of the sweated industry were clothing and dress making, where women worked in workshops in the home of their employers. Some women however worked from home and were paid piece rates (paid for every item they made). Women were easy targets for sweatshop owners as they could not afford to complain for fear of losing their jobs, and it was almost impossible to set up trade unions as the number of workers per shop was very low. Women were usually paid two-thirds of a man's wage, or even less and were rarely ever promoted above men. Women usually weren’t as well educated as men as some families educated their sons and not daughters because they assumed that women would get married and have children. The school leaving age was twelve and staying at school after that meant having to pay school fees or winning a scholarship, sometimes if a girl won a scholarship her parents would refuse it as they needed her wages. As a result 10 per cent of children attended school after twelve and 10 per cent of them were girls. Before the war effort middle and upper-class women were not expected to work. Middle-class women would sometimes work as secretaries or in a posh shop as an assistant before they were married.

Poland

In occupied Poland, as elsewhere, women played a major role in the resistance movement, putting them in the front line. Their most important role was as couriers carrying messages between cells of the resistance movement and distributing news broadsheets and operating clandestine printing presses. During partisan attacks on Nazi forces and installations they served as scouts.

During the Warsaw Rising of 1944, female members of the Home Army were couriers and medics, but many carried weapons and took part in the fighting. Among the more notable women of the Home Army was Wanda Gertz who created and commanded DYSK (Women's sabotage unit). For her bravery in these activities and later in the Warsaw Uprising she was awarded Poland's highest awards - Virtuti Militari and Polonia Restituta. One of the articles of the capitulation was that the German Army recognized them as full members of the armed forces and needed to set up separate Prisoner-of-war camps to hold over 2000 women prisoners-of-war.

Finland

Much like in the United Kingdom, the Finnish women took part in defence: nursing, air raid signaling, rationing and hospitalization of the wounded. Their organization was called Lotta Svärd, where voluntary women took part in auxiliary work of the armed forces to help those fighting on the front. Lotta Svärd was one of the largest, if not the largest, voluntary group in World War II. Though they never held guns (a rule among the Lottas), without women's help Finland probably could not have held off the Soviet forces as long as it did.

Germany

The Third Reich, contrary to popular belief, had similar roles for women. The SS-Helferinnen were regarded as part of the SS if they had undergone training at a Reichsschule SS but all other female workers were regarded as being contracted to the SS and chosen largely from concentration camps. Women also served in auxiliary units in the navy (Kriegshelferinnen), air force (Luftnachrichtenhelferinnen) and army (Nachrichtenhelferin). Hundreds of women auxiliaries (Aufseherin) served for the SS in the camps, the majority of which were at Ravensbrück.

I n Combat

The role of women in combat has become a particularly contentious issue in contemporary militaries throughout the world. With the current exclusion of women from many combat roles seen by some as a form of sexual discrimination, an ongoing debate continues to rage. Many on each side of the issue cite the alleged physical and mental differences of the two sexes, the effect of the presence of the opposite sex on the battlefield, and the traditional view of male soldiers as arguments both for and against women being employed as soldiers under combat situations. The idea of having women in combat has been thrown around by several civilizations since the beginning of time. Some societies have chosen to not allow women to fight for their countries, while others have used women to fight in their wars as frequently as men, such as 800,000 women who served in the Soviet military during World War 2, of which nearly 70% saw front line action. Women have been serving in the military in numerous support roles in several countries for many years. In modern wars, however, there may be no front line, and women, in such roles as military police providing convoy escort, or staffing checkpoints, have gotten into firefights as part of a mixed unit, Raven 42. SGT Leigh Ann Hester, among other decorated soldiers in the Raven 42 unit, received the Silver Star, the third highest US combat decoration. While nurses under fire had received this award previously, Hester was the first woman to receive it for direct participation in combat.

Although women are recruited to serve in the military in most countries, only a few countries permit women to fill active combat roles. Countries that allow this include Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway and Switzerland. Other nations allow female soldiers to serve in certain Combat Arms positions, such as Israel and Great Britain, which allow women to serve in Artillery roles, while still excluding them from units with a dedicated Infantry role. The US allows women in most combat flying positions.