Conflict including the participation in the workforce and the use and media. The National WorldWar One Museum and memorial in Kansas City Missouri host of this event. This evening we are really thrilled to have doctor lynn with us, then thank you for making the journey she will have a conversation with us to make a presentation for about 45 minutes after where theyll be acumen a time. There are microphones on each side camille will help navigate just let her know and we can accommodate that afterwards theres a book signing, in the lobby and sean is theyre able to take your credit card and lynn is ready to sign it its not too early to be making christmas gifts. So get all that sopping well done well before doctor dumenil is the robert glass cleveland professor of american history, america. At oxidant college shes authored a number of distinguished institutions, including berkeley, Richmond College she special u. S. Womens history since the civil war. Shes a distinguished professor having received many honorees, many honors. Including being a senior at the university of rome and many others recognitions. Which is all to say that were in for a treat. She brings to this topic a richness which i think is going to make this experience one of real memory for us. Once again ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here and for participating in the activities of the National WorldWar One Museum and memorial. Please join me in welcoming, doctor lynn dumenil. applause thank you, im really delighted to be here and i wanted to thank the museum for inviting me of course, but also how much i appreciate her organizing me. And of course thank you for coming. When you think about it on the surface talking about women and war, seems an odd connection because we so usually associate war with mail soldiers with combat, with masculinity itself. So why talk about women and war . Well for those of you who know the museum, you know that in total wars, like world war i and world war ii, civilians become increasingly important. And women are a part of that, process. They worked and munitions factories, they served as nurses and other aides and the military machine. And much more bureaucratically than women had worked for war done in the past. Its actually tied to the nature of a modern state, a bureaucratic war right. And this is particularly true in the United States, women were very much involved in a wide range of activities. And their support for the war effort is in fact a part of the definition of how modern global wars were fought. So if womens role in wartime allows us to more fully understand the nature of war mobilization, and the rhetoric and support of war, it also helps us to think about the role of world war i as a watershed. As an idea that somehow since the war, things changed. I got interested in this because i did a book on the 1920s, and i did it people kept saying since the war. Something happen something happened, it was their marker for explaining what they thought were extraordinary changes in the 1920s. And this is particularly true for how people talked about women. Its very interesting because right before the war, american started talking about this new woman, she was seemingly liberated excuse me im an after the war. She was seemingly liberated in terms of politics, work and private life. Especially in terms of sexuality and of course this new woman. Or the flapper as you may be used to thinking about her, was a stereotype and she really only described and a great extent, young White Privilege women. But even though we could argue about how liberated women may or may not have been, there is no question, that among mainstream women at least new norms and new opportunities were expanding and observers during the 1920s gave the war at least partial credit. Law according to frederik lewis allen, after the war, women sport out of schools and colleges into all manners occupation, causing as he put, it the lac ending of parental and has been authority and encouraging the headlong pursuit of freedom. Admittedly, during world war, i dramatic changes did seem imminent. Women were outraged in the nation by taking the white house. Women were taking jobs formally thought to be exclusively appropriate to men. 25,000 women served overseas a support for the troops. Millions did work at home. But was the war really transformative . Most of the changes that observers saw in the 1920s, we can really see as early as 1910. For example, 1910 marks a very significant upswing in womens participation in the workforce. Not 1920. The teens was also extremely important in terms of women in politics. The progressive reform era sought womens heightened political and involvement and most importantly, the Suffrage Movement had heated up in the teens. By 1914, 11 states had already passed womens suffrage. Before the war, americans were talking and recognizing women were challenging conventional rules, and they were very ambivalent about this change. Another complication about this question of the impact of war on women was that many of the dramatic changes of the war, especially those concerning women getting quote, mens jobs, disappeared at wars and. Like that. Historians, myself included didnt really think that war was that transformative. We did not think it was causal. We still need to account for observers in the 1920s since the social change, since the war. For that matter, we need to understand the common belief during the war. That much change was affected in terms of womens world. These beliefs suggest that the war became a marker for consciousness concerning the emergence of the new women. What im arguing here is that the war accelerated developments already underway, but specifically heightened awareness of this emerging and contested new woman. My book examines a wide range of issues, much broader than i can talk about here. Womens work, their experience abroad, ethnic and racial and Class Divisions among women. The Suffrage Movement, but today, i want to hone in on this question of your as a marker of change. To do that, i want to concentrate on visual imagery during the war concerning men women and war. Before i get into the specifics, i just want to point out that in mainstream popular culture, women of color color were virtually invisible. In reporting about womens war mobilization. This does not mean they were not there. And los angeles, for example, mexican american, japanese american and African American women or active in red cross of jewelrys that provided knitted goods. When the war extended to the great migration of African Americans in the cities of the south and north, the migrants included women who found you opportunities beyond domestic and agricultural labor. Although we could find evidence of the participation, especially that of black women, modern women so celebrated during the war was in part defined by her whiteness. So my images will focus on this group. So let me turn to the images. Im going to look at both print and film. In print media, we see that the representation of women reflects both traditional values concerning womens proper rules, and suggested the possibility for a cultural and social change. And political change as well. Government proper canada, for the most part, followed a very conventional pattern. Posters frequently used react female figures as abstract icons representing the nation and its war aims. If youve been to the museum, you see many images like this. A beautiful woman in this case, flanked by the United States flag or dressed in the stars and stripes, symbolized with the nation was fighting for and was often explicitly used to encouragement to enlist. Here, she is encouraging everyone to buy bonds. This reveals a way in which wartime illustrators conflated and idealized women with the nation state. These were heroic figures, not real women, and the iconography was deeply rooted and western european art and religious conventions. Now, there is one kind of interesting, not official poster. African americans dont appear in government issued posters, so they made their own. This is from a magazine i cant resist it, because one, it shows how powerful that convention was wrapping a woman in the flag to represent liberty, right . But the other thing that is great about this as you can see it at the bottom. It says made in america. And made is spelled maid. So it is pretty clever to comment on the type of work women were allowed to do. Inside the magazine, they said African American women were made in america, meaning they were true americans, unlike those dangerous immigrants. This is one image that is so exceptional that it is kind of a good counter to the rest of the things that youre going to see. Were going to move to some of the government posters that were issued at the time. For the most part, they followed these very conventional patterns. Posters frequently used excuse me, i missed something. Just one second. Posters represent an actual women in these cases. It encouraged them to participate in war activities, including farming in the womens land army, or buying liberty bonds, knitting socks or conserving food. They rarely challenged ideas of womens proper place. I think you can see that very clearly in the lovely women in the kitchen. The lovely grandmother, warm and welcoming her sons to win the war, and then the red cross one, as you may well know, one of the most popular and famous posters of the war era, and it was reused during world war ii as well. Many would argue that what it actually suggests a lot of power, because the women who is holding the soldier in her arms is enormous and it looks like a baby. But in fact, i would argue that it does show power, but it shows women in maternal power, right . I think it does fit with my argument that it is fairly conventional. For the most part, government issued posters denied or ignored the claim of women activists who insisted that women who were workers were quote, the second line of defense. On the left, you will see a poster created by the ymca. It is not a government poster. It is very typical of the y to represent women being crucial to the war effort. It is absolutely remarkable in the way it challenges conventional notions about women. They look like they are in an army. They are carrying heavy equipment, wrenches and the like, and it is reminding them that women are an army. They are backing our second line of defenses. The only posters i have ever found the government issued featuring a working woman was the one on the right. In this case, you cant see shes doing something quite conventional in terms of early 20th century. She is a secretary. She is part of the war effort, shes doing good work, but she is clearly doing something in a very conventional sort of way. Like government propaganda, commercial media usually portrayed women in traditional roles as well. Poignant depictions of soldiers leaving their women behind as they went off to war was a popular motif, and the romantic pictures of soldiers and their sweethearts like this one. I am hitting the trail to normandy, so kissed me goodbye. With the man and women locked in a passionate embrace. This one was more erotically charged than most images of the sort, but it nonetheless seems to me to emphasize that war is mens work and they frame military service, not just in terms of defending their country, but also protecting their female dependents, right . So that notion of masculinity becomes very clear in this image. Although these images of maternal or feminine women doing their part for the war in ways that did not challenge gender roles were very evident. There were alternative representations of women in war. In particular, coverage of newspapers magazines of womens war efforts seized on the way in which women were breaking new ground. As women as one woman wrote in 1918 magazine article, today she is everywhere. A salvation lassie, a Salvation Army lassie, serving coffee and donuts on the firing line, in the red cross emergency hospital, at the front in the ammunitions factory at home, filling the gaps and manmade industry everywhere. The media was absolutely fascinated by the way in which women were taking on jobs thought to be mail. And i should point out that it wasnt the case that more women were working during the war, but rather that they were working in more interesting and better paid jobs. It is a shift in the nature of their work, not an expansion of their numbers. To support my suggestion of how engaged the media was, ive been giving you my absolutely favorite image. This is from the philadelphia enquirer, and it features an illustration of seven powder workers in a new jersey plant. The women are dressed in identical overalls and simple caps. Their arms are around each other and they look boldly into the camera. There is smiles are bright and suggest the light, if not in the work that they are doing, and having their pictures taken. The merry nature of the Group Photograph like this reinforces a sense of shared identity among the women as the much celebrated munitions workers. The text that accompanied the image says, the girls employed here have shown that they are not afraid of their jobs as powder makers, but go to their work with the same coolness as men. This kind of image multiplies. A newspaper offered photograph of a pants wearing munitions worker standing at a formidable looking machine, and explaining women workers at the frankfurt arsenal new jersey had designed the outfit that the u. S. Government had been adopted for use of the women working in their plants. This attention to womens working clothes is absolutely crucial because it underscores a novelty of women taking on what were formerly mens john. This would persist in the war years. Excuse me, this would persist in the war years for most. Although, there were also some slight changes in costumes for women not working in industries. For example, in the past, a wore a white blouse and a dark simple skirt. The only thing that happens during the war is that the hemlines go up slightly. But for the women whose jobs required pants, overalls or skirted uniforms, they were really breaking dramatically with convention. Theyre masculine ice to closed symbolized the way in which they were taking on mens jobs. Men who wore uniforms, especially conductors, elevator operators and the like, were notable in that it was linked to the notion of a military uniform they used this type of uniform that suggested womens who work hard was part of their service to the nation in times of war. They were this an expression of citizenship. Images of the cross dressing worker signaled a downed tree crossing a new women. It wasnt just that women were working in factories or railroads or street cars who were wearing all these uniforms. Women who served abroad as nurses, social workers telephone operators or volunteered at home for quasigovernmental agencies received extensive publicity about their uniforms. Here to, this one is a why am see a worker. It created canteens at the front and hired women to run them. This is a fairly typical of the type of image that appeared in the media and hear what i think is interesting is not only is she wearing her uniform and looking boldly into the camera, but she is next to an enormous military truck. It is very common, the images of women abroad are shown in that way. My favorite image is one that the museum has, but its not as good as the copy i bought for my own house. It is a little bizarre, i would admit, to have a world war i poster in your living room, but i love it, so i did. It was a present to me. This one, again, remember the white wcl is not messing around in the way in which talks about women being part of the second line of defense and this is really quite extraordinary. The operator, the telephone operator in a neat uniform, shes competently at work at her switchboard. But behind her is the backdrop of a really seen a uniformed men in battle. She, like the men, its clearly at the front, a message that her military uniform underlined. I wanted to emphasize that this is not just women abroad, but women at home, women that worked for the red cross, raising funds for the liberty loan, who might be working for other kinds of non governmental agencies. They all had uniforms and were constantly being discussed in magazines and newspapers. So this is a good example. Some of these are women abroad, that otherwise you could see the woman farmer, you have a driver, a woman driver that is next to the farmer, and she is very much like my lovely woman on the cover of my book. So the activities of women as wage earners, as overseas participants, and home front volunteers, received their clearest expression of those citizenships and the boundary crossing new women in the newspaper and magazine coverage of parades, such as the liberty bond parades or the red cross once. Needs to emphasize the uniformed women. I think this is a remarkable one. It is taking place in new york. It is a voluntary association of women, and you can see how clearly their uniforms are modeled after uniforms of the time. This one, i think, is also particularly interesting. These are canteen workers for the National League for womens service, and ngo at the time. They are walking down fifth avenue. The iconic place where you have military parades, and here are these women as part of, i think this is a red cross one, with the flags, their uniforms are in perfect step. It really illustrates my point beautifully. And for a little local color, this is young women, girls in kansas city. These are red cross volunteers. They are in high school and they are being seen marching in their uniforms, which is very typical of red cross parades, to have children of various sorts, and again, all in uniform. A few years before the war, it was considered radical for respectable women to be in a public place like this. The Suffrage Movement began its parade in 1910, and they were really considered a major challenge to respectable notions of womens behavior. This bold occupation of public space that happened during the war was an important demonstration of womens legitimacy as political actors. But it is contested. There are people who are nervous about this. It is really significant that women played such an important part in patriotic parades. The coverage of wage earning women or overseas workers at home volunteers offers a pervasive vision of white women in having space, public space that was previously thought to be exclusively male. Miss transgression was generally legit made it in the context of a National Crisis that literally required that women step outside convention. If not all women dawned mail attire or manisha uniforms or took to the street to joint male citizens in parading for the national cause, many did. Their actions garnered extensive publicity that offered the American Public a scents offering often a striking visual one, that the new women often debated in the years before the war had seized the war as an opportunity for challenging gender conventions in the name of patriotism. The same kinds of things we will see when we switch to film. Here again, there are both images that represent conventional women and images that are challenging them. Not many world war i films still exist. For my research, i saw those that did exist and used fan magazines, stills, Motion Pictures distributor summaries and the like. There were a lot of different war films. Many of them featured battles, as you might expect. But there was another genre that focused on war and the home front and domestic issues. They were quite striking in their portrayal of women. Many of these films represented war as a means to protect women in the family, so mens role in that protective situation. Others portrayed modern women who were themselves eager to seek to battle the enemy themselves. A significant number of films, even those that featured the modern, strong women turned on the theme of rape and assault to stresss womens vulnerability and im going to turn to that then i will go back to print media for a moment. I am sure many of you have seen posters like this. A couple of these are in the museum, i think. For contemporary viewers, remember belgium, and of the brutal death of children and the rapes of women that were the subject of extensive british propaganda. Although the propaganda was undoubtedly exaggerated, wartime rape certainly did take place, and there is certainly no doubt that American Public had a perception of german soldiers as the rootish hands. Destroy the mad route is another good example of this. Originally a poster that was adapted for the american audience. This haunting image reflects more than the artists depiction of the germans as beasts. Its power derives in part from the pervasive American Convention depicting racial others as polite hoax. It specifically in joins popular stereotypes of racial others, both immigrants and blacks as threats to pure, white womanhood. And by extension, the nation itself. In the last one, we have to dig a bit. The womens form across the uncle sams lap is the iconic representation we talked about earlier. Here, we are supposed to connect the concept of a woman s on her, in other words, her chastity with the nations. This vigil merging of womens virtue with a National Honor signal the way which wartime representation of sexual violation symbolized the threat to both patriarchal and national power. It is not surprising we see this theme repeatedly in films. One of the most important one was hearts of the world, a w. Griffith film. You can still see it. Its from 1918, and centers on a small village in france where two Young Americans mary and douglas fall in love. But the winning plans are disrupted in the coming of the war. He decides to fight for france in the film details the british funds in many different ways. The young women of the village are sexually assaulted by drunken germans. Mary is reduce the sleeve labor in a potato field. The poster advertising this film features that exact act, with lillian dish, the actress who plays marie being whipped by the evil germans. According marie is also cornered by evil german mobs, according to the cornered her behind a locked door. Chuckling, muttering violent words and german, running a lascivious hand over her arms and shoulders as he held her close. That is the picture from the still and also in photo play. The end comes when murray escapes to the attic where she finds douglas who disappeared. Its miraculous. It happens a lot. As they await their inevitable capture, they pledged their marriage vows and murray extracts from douglas his pledge, that he will shoot her himself if the germans find them. In other words, saving her, literally from a fate worse than death. Mercifully, they were rescued when a secondary comedic, spunky character in the film saves them by lobbing a grenade at the germans as they advance. So this rape threat owes a great deal to the convention of melodrama, u. S. Melodrama, and it was certainly not unique to the war. If you have seen the pretty viral birth of a nation, it certain tours around the rate of white women by newly freed slaves, and guess what . One of the stars of birth of a nation is lillian dish. The same character here. Right . The audience makes the connections. It is very clear. War films, ubiquitously use the added an extra layer of meaning by having the rape stand for what was at stake in the war. Certainly, National Honor and other things, but also brutality against women, and the threat to the family. Thats what essential ways in which propaganda was portrayed to americans. For man, support for the war became framed as protection for their families. Hollywoods use of this reap imagery supports allied war aims, obviously, but its also vehicle for reinscribing victorian notions about womens sexual impassivity and vulnerability. Another genre, which one historian has called the slack or film, it talks about the dangerous side a familial love. There are at least a dozen of these enlistment dramas or slack or films that feature an overly protective mother who tries to keep person from enlisting. The 1918 film features a mother who alters her sons birth certificate to make him eligible for service. According to the photo play, the mother is a strange study in affection and unscrupulous ness. One of the suggestions for how to advertised a film to distributors was to use spiders and their displays for window work, it says, use dried or artificial spiders. Now, these are stills from the film that it no longer exists, sadly. On the left, you see the mother at the draft board. Her son is behind him, and she is trying to keep them from taking her son. It is very powerful. The only other women in the picture is virginia who is on the left with the little hat. Virginia is the one who convinces the man that he must endless. He must defy his mother. He must be a real man. Here she is, congratulating him, and you notice the mother is long gone. This is, i think, really quite interesting. She is the all american girl. She is modern, she is the representation of young, modern womanhood. It is not the mothers, but the young women in these types of films who are usually the vehicle for restoring the mans manhood. His patriotism. The mother is pretrade as portrayed as unscrupulous or spiders, and are presented as overly protective. In contrast, the young women are not just young, but they are modern. They shamed the men, but they themselves often want to go fight and talk about how sorry they are that they are not able to serve. So these are quite significant representations of this new, modern womanhood. Another genre is what i call, for lack of a better word, the plucky films, plucky women. Numerous war films, young women faced danger and chilled brave bravery and resourcefulness. And many cases they even cross dressed, wearing mens clothes for part of the film. These brave women were not new to the film era, the war era, and of the serial films that targeted mostly working class women, featured heroines who acted an unconventional ways, courting and escaping danger, showing pluck and daring do. And we see it and world war i. It is following something that came slightly before. The most significant cereal during the war is a series called patrira patria. It went from 1916 to 1917. The vast majority of the film is lost, but like most cereals of the time, they are summarized every week with photographs or images so you know what happens. Phil historians are interested because it was a vehicle for William Randall hearst. His company he was very heavily involved in this and it reflected his politics. Its a call for preparedness, but it features not germany as americas potential enemy, but rather japan, then an ally of britain with an assist from mexico, and it reflects the pervasive racism in hearst publications. This is by the way, before this immerman telegram, so it is his idea. Here i want to focus on the representation of patria played by the famous actress, irene castle. Week after week, patria and her boyfriend, a federal agent, conveniently face one horrific threat after another. She proved herself to be an ace pilot, a fearless defender of herself and others. When reviewers breathless comment is worth repeating at length. They seem to think she did her own stunts. It is long but it is worth it. She is thrown from a bucking horse, she dives head on from the deck of an oceangoing steamboat and swims into a motorboat into which she claims an assisted. She climbs the mast of the burning ship and falls with the mask into the water far below. She plunges over the waterfall into the whirlpool, she races her motor against a railroad car loaded with dynamite, she flies an airplane, she operates machine gun and does many other things that make you gasp. But never for a moment does she lose her dainty, graceful, feminine charm. I dont think this was all in 1 15 minute segment, but possibly. The emphasis on castles and by extension, the patria femininity is pervasive in the serialized versions of the plot as well as in the reviews and advertisements. Reviewers emphasize her gorgeous clothing, including this one. This is an elegantly tailored skirt, a military uniform. She is in full military garb, her arms are outstretched, and her body leans forward, which conveys something of a feminine power that the serial thought to convey. She is confident and independent. At the end of the cereal, the mexican and japanese armies invade the United States at the border. Par who put her in charge of the army she has to come in and take charge, and as you might imagine, the invasion was repelled. The series ends with a couple committing them selves to each other and the service of their country. These spy and detective plots which were emerging in patria, also appeared in feature films. None of them still exist, but all of them have scripts and other things to let us know that this is a fairly common theme in the popular film of the time, and it really does suggest a depiction of resolute women who tangle with the enemy and a number of hair raising adventures. I want to conclude along with two films, both of which you can see if you wish. They star mary pictured who was already a major star in the teens. The love for her curls and win some performance in which she invariably played young girls, not women. In her two war related films, she took on a major persona. And joanna and lift, it features a lonely young girl stuck on a farm with very strict parents. Shes bored. She is miserable. Then, the army camps on her fathers ground. Now things are great. She is having a terrific time. She falls in love with an impressive army officer. When he is getting ready to go abroad, she is desolate, so she steals a military uniform to try to hide in order to go with the troops. She is found, of course, but the commander agrees that she can become a mascot for the unit, and you can see in the final scenes, which shows the boys marching away and joanna is in a soldiers suit standing on a cannon, waving the american flag. The one on the left is one of the films advertising campaigns. The one on the right is a picture of mary herself, and she often did show up on this military uniform. The reason for this is that she was very much engaged in promoting the war. She adopted the 143rd Field Artillery unit in california. In fact her troops are part of the film. Her contribution to the war effort was a significant part of her public image during a war. She appeared both with charlie chaplain and douglas fair banks, as well as selling war bonds. She offered rousing oration, is encouraging men to enlist and women to get their men she attracted thousands of spectators and became the most well known female supporter of the war. There is no reason to think this is a publicity technique, but certainly, her studio me the most of it, as you might imagine. In the little american, one of the films posters i am sorry. I forgot to give you another cool piece. I will just go back. You have seen these, i think. If you are a regular museum person, you know them. On the one hand, it seems to be quite extraordinary that the women are wearing uniforms. But i dont think they suggest very much about the power that comes with uniforms. These women are 60. They are trading on their sexuality. I would say the same thing of these pictures, the former picture of mary pictured. She is not supposed to be powerful there. The uniform is really almost reemphasizing her femininity. The images are not very radical. This is the one i was talking about from the little american. Here, with the Publicity Department has done is turn mary pictured into america, into lady liberty. They have taken that notion of what this was, the way the posters present the iconic lady liberty, and there she is, americas sweetheart. It was also during world war i when she got that name. This film is fascinating. Here, she plays an adult women. There is an interesting correspondence between demille and jeffrey last ski, and last key wanted her to portray a girl in a role that feminist in the country are interested in. The kind of girl who jumps and it is a mans work with the matter at the front line. He doesnt quite do this, but she is remarkably competent and confident. Angela moore is in washington d. C. , and has two suitors. One french jewels, one german, carl. They both go off to fight with their respective countries, and shortly thereafter, angela, a neutral american sales to europe to help her and in belgium. This comes out before the u. S. Entered the war. The vote is torpedoed and the disaster scene on the ship is specifically designed to revoke the loose attain a disaster. In the rescue boat, we get she six her fist at the submarine commander and says you fired on american women and children by the time she reaches the chateau, the germans are fast approaching four and has died. She is in charge. Her major goal initially, is to try to protect her female servants. This is a still on the left from the film. She bundles them off to the attic and faces the marauding germans by herself. They are brutes, and a new soldier appears, and as you might imagine it is her former carl. In the dark he almost rapes her. Once they recognize each other, she chastise him for having become part of the military machine, and together, they hear the offscreen rate of a servant woman. She says to carl, there is a spark of manhood in you, go and say these women. This is the aftermath of that scene. And this is the other poster for the film. On the one hand, you have mary as america, lady liberty, all in rents and whites and blues. Then you have this pastel image, straight out of a kind of victorian representation of the passive, chin teal women who are the victims of war, the silent sufferers. It really shows the way in which the film is struggling with both types of representation. Through a complex set of developments, which he will be happy to know im not going to go into detail. It goes on. Angela spies for the french and is encouraged by carl who has come to her side. He redeems himself. In other words, by his efforts. They are caught and they are facing a firing squad, but jewels arrives and saves them both. But there is still a huge disaster and it is mary who saves carl from death. She again its quite the heroin. She is resolute and in her determination to do what is right, she emerges as an independent, plucky woman who thinks nothing of going to belgium alone in the midst of war, and when she becomes entangled in the war, she is both resourceful and great and saving herself and the man she loves. This plucky heroine certainly signal challenges to conventional notions about womens essentially passive role and more. They saved themselves and others, they become orders, a Service Nurses abroad. More dramatically, movie heroines like castles, patria or angela, challenge barriers to notions of womens conventional and respectable behavior by taking on the enemy firsthand and winning. The radical potential of this challenge, i would say, is constrained by the emphasis on femininity and the predictability happy ending of love and marriage. I would say this persistent motif of sexual danger made a potent reminder of womens vulnerability in the face of an evil enemy. Films hint at a provocative new women enjoying new freedoms and independents, but ultimately, convey the limits of wartime opportunities for significant changes in womens roles. In world war i print and media, conventional images of women, especially those that feature their sexual vulnerability coexisted with more modern representations. Juxtaposition of the to suggest a way in which the era was suffused with tension about the changing roles of american women. It clearly, the media recognized and provocatively pictured a potential for dramatic change in womens lives. Working women challenged mens prerogative, never more obviously than when they dawned overalls and uniforms, parading women took their patriotism to the street, also suggested many women were eager to move beyond the constraints of home and family to a larger area. Many family heroines were resourceful and independent. American audiences were relentlessly exposed to women who challenged conventions inward, clothing and freedom of movement, in the occupation of public space. So much so that many were convinced that the war had produced dramatic change. But despite these expectations, these ideas didnt really survive the war. Suffrage certainly was expedited by the war, and is a really important piece of the story. But for women workers, coffee their Job Opportunities evaporated when the war was ended anne. So cohen too, where the assumptions about womens roles in the 1920s. A lot of anxiety about women who might be challenging those, and let me just show you two images from the 1920s. On the left, this is how the u. S. Postal service decided to portray women of the 1920s as the highly sexualized dancing flapper. On the right, you see the it girl, clara bo. She was a far cry from the war era women of the second line of defense. So, womens proper place in the war was challenged, but at the end of the 1920s, all kinds of representations of challenge that featured strong, resourceful, independent women in politics and work, have really sort of emerged in a sexualized imagery that we see here. And that is a whole other lecture, so i will leave you with that. Thank you. applause folks, you are welcome to come down to the microphone or you can raise your hand and i will come to you. Area you described how the wave of change for women began before 1940, and i was wondering if you can draw a relationship between the wave of immigration in the early 20th century, and in what followed and the first and second decades . That is a really good question. I tend to always say that, so i have to find a different response. Puppets laughs but it is a really good question. One of the things you may be thinking about is one of the things that happens for women in terms of immigration is that european immigrant daughters flood the workplace primarily in factories. One of the things they do in the teens is become very involved in the labor movement. So they are out in the streets picketing and showing themselves as quite resourceful and independent. The argument is the Suffrage Movement, the mainstream Suffrage Movement, to some extent draws its parading and more radical, physical activity from working class women. I definitely think there is a link there. Does that speak to your question . Thank you. Hi. I am wondering about the relationship between the Russian Revolution and the role of women, especially 1917. Thank you. That is another really good question. There are a lot of different ways of talking about it. One of the things that was really exciting for people at the time and kind of scandalous, was that russian women served in uniform. One of them was called the battalion of death, and the leader if it comes to the United States and its highly touted and interviewed. There is a movie, a really cheesy one based on this story as well. That is part of it, but there is something going on here that women are not just serving here and support for troops, but there is actually an example of women who are really challenging it. It is a long, complicated story that is tied into the revolution, obviously. The thing i really like about it is that american women journalists go to russia, and they have to it is scary. You get on the siberian express and get their, and they then go out with the women and interviewed them. So it helps to increase the publicity about that something is really a foot. The women journalists who are just really remarkable, and are at the center, i would say, of the early 20th century feminist movement. Two of the journalists were part of a really important new york circle of feminists. They just moved right into the war in that way. You speak to some really interesting points. Did i answer enough of your question . You have Something Else in mind . Would you give me the name of the journalists . Sure. One of them was called madeleine duty. Another is betsy bt. I am having a senior moment louise bryant. She was married to read who wrote, ten days that shook the world, which is the famous film remember that one . My husband is also a historian and he thinks that she wrote the book, not reed. So there you go. There is actually a book by a woman named julie my mom was in the british army in world war ii. The way she described it at the time that after france fell, that it was all kinds of hands on deck in britain that no matter who you are, you are going to serve in some way or somehow. I was wondering, in world war i, was that the same in britain . Because at the time, i think the monarchy was a little stronger like downtown abby and all of that kind of stuff. There was still inability around where the u. S. Didnt really have a nobility that could influence things and such a way. We were kind of more democratic, so to speak. Im wondering if that might would affect that might have had on british women during world war i . As you know, the britons are in dire straits during world war i. They are losing man at a rate they never could have imagined. 20,000 in one day. Women are brought in by necessity into a variety of things, both at home, but also as ambulance drivers and nurses, and clerical workers. The u. S. Army would not let american women they were in the marines, and they were in the navy, but not the army. They would not let them go abroad. They hired other people. They hired british women as secretaries in france. I would say there is a real sense of urgency, but still, the brits were dragging their feet. There was a desire on the part of british women to create a land army. The government resisted and resisted, until finally they had no choice. They really needed to use women in the fields in order to bring in the crops. It is not quite the same willingness to do it, but there is certainly a lot of it is much more than in the United States, because the british war is much more different than the american war. I sometimes feel odd when i talk about american women for example, who go abroad. They are acting to, to some extent like erie having a great time. It is like a vacation. They are excited. It is adventuresome. Part of my explanation of that is that they are there for a very short time, and they havent really experienced the devastation of the war in the way europeans did. So there are real differences between americans, british, french, the german and the like. Thank you. Folks, the doctor will be available in our lobby afterwards if you have more questions. On behalf of the National WorldWar One Museum and the memorial, thank you for comind