Transcripts For CSPAN3 Womens Roles In World War I 20240712

Book in the lobby. They will be able to take your credit card. Lynn will be ready to sign it. It is not true early to be making a christmas gift. [laughter] so that all the shopping done well before. Dumenil is the professor of American History at occidental college. She has taught a number of distinguished institutions, including berkeley, whitman college, and she specializes in u. S. Womens history and cultural and social history since the civil war. She is a distinguished professor, having received many honors, including being a senior fulbright lecture, and many other recognitions, which is also to say we are in for a treat. She brings to this topic a richness which i think is going to make this experience one of real memory frost. So, once again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here and for participating in the activities of the national war or one museum and memorial. I invite you back. Please join me in welcoming dr. Lynn dumenil. [applause] dr. Dumenil thank you. I am really delighted to be here. I want to thank the museum for inviting me, of course, but also how much ie appreciate her for inviting me. And thank you for coming. When you think about it, on the surface, talking about women in war, there seems to be a connection, because we so usually associate war with male 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 war is like world war i and world war ii civilians , become increasingly important, and women are a part of that process. They worked in munitions factories, workers nurses and they served as nurses and other aides to the military machine. And much more bureaucratically at any other war event in the past. It is actually tied to the nature of the modern state, a bureaucratic war. 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 in support of war, it also helps us to think about the role of world war i as a watershed, as an idea war somehow, since the things changed. , i got interested in this because i did a book on the 1920s. As i did it, people kept saying since the war, something happened something happened. It was a marker for what they thought were the extraordinary changes in the 1920s. And this was particularly true of how people talked about women. It is very interesting, because right before the war, american s started talking about this new woman. She was seemingly liberated me, i meant after the war she was seemingly liberated in terms of politics, work, and private life, especially with her sexuality. The flapper was a stereotype and she really only described in the great extent young, white, privileged women. There is no question that among least, newwomen at norms and new opportunities were expanding, and observers during the gave the war at least 1920s partial credit. According to Frederick Lewis allen, after the war, women poured out of schools and colleges into all manners of occupation, causing as he put it, the slackening of Parental Authority and encouraging the headlong pursuit of freedom. Admittedly, during world war i, dramatic changes did seem imminent. Militant women, suffrage supporters were outrageing the nation by picketing the white house. Women were taking jobs formerly thought to be exclusively appropriate to men. 25,000 women served overseas as support for the troops. Millions did work at home. But was the war really transformative . Most of the changes observers saw in the 1920s, we can see as early as 1910. For example 1910 marks a , significant upswing in womens participation in the workforce not 1920. Also extremely important in terms of women in politics. The progressive reform era saw womens heightened political involvement, and, most importantly the suffrage , movement had heated up in the teens. By 1914, 11 states had already passed womens suffrage. War, americans were talking and recognizing that women were challenging conventional roles 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 mens jobs disappeared at wars end, like that. So, historians myself included, dont really think the war was that transformative. It wasnt causal. But we still need to account for the 1920s sense of social change since the war. For that matter, we need to understand the common belief during the war that much change in fact in terms of womens roles. These beliefs suggest the war became a marker for consciousness concerning the emergence of the new woman. So, what i am arguing here is that the war accelerator 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 war as a marker of change. And to do that, i want to concentrate on visual imagery during the war concerning women and war. Before i get into the specifics, i want to point out in mainstream popular culture, women of color were virtually invisible. In reporting about womens war mobilization. This does not mean they werent there. In los angeles, for example, mexicanamerican, japaneseamerican, and africanamerican women were active in red cross auxiliaries that raised funds and provided knitted goods. When the war stimulated the great migration of africanamericans in the south and north women found , work beyond domestic and agricultural labor. But we can find evidence, especially for black women. The modern woman so celebrated during the war and afterwards was in part defined her whiteness. So my images will focus on this group. So let me turn to the images. I am going to look at both print and film. In print media, we see the representation of women reflects both traditional values concerning womens proper roles , and suggested the possibility for cultural and social change, and political change, too. Government propaganda, for the most part, followed a very conventional pattern. Posters frequently used female figures as abstract icons representing the nation and its war aims. And if you have been in the museum, you have seen many images like this, right, a beautiful women sometimes flanked by the United States flag or even dressed in the stars stripes, symbolizing what the nation was fighting for and was often explicitly used to encourage men to enlist. Here, she is encouraging everyone to buy bonds. This reveals a way in which wartime illustrators conflated and idealized woman with the nationstate. These were heroic figures, not , and the iconography was deeply rooted in western european art and religious conventions. Now, there is one kind of interesting not official poster. Africanamericans dont appear in governmenta posters, so they made their own. This is from a magazine i cant resist it because one, it shows how powerful that convention was of wrapping a woman in the flag to represent liberty, right . But the other thing that is really great about this one is you can see at the bottom, i maid in it for you, 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 that africanamerican women were maid in america, meaning they were the true americans, unlike those dangerous immigrants. So this is one image that is so exceptional that it is kind of a good counter to the rest of the things you going to see. So i am going to move into some of the government posters that were issued at the time. The most part, they followed these very conventional patterns. Ters for the used frequently used they represented actual women in these cases. And encouraged them to participate in more activities, including farming in the womens land army, buying liberty bonds, knitting socks or conserving foods. They rarely challenge ideas of of womens proper place and i think you can see that clearly in the lovely woman in the kitchen, the lovely grandmother, warm and welcoming her sons to win the war. 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. And many would argue that is actually suggests a lot of power, because the woman who is holding the soldier in her arms is enormous and it looks like a baby. Right . It is a pieta. Yes, ituld argue that does show power. That 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 women who were workers who were the second line of defense. So, on the left, you will see a poster created by the ymca. It is not a government poster. Tois very typical of the y represent women workers as being crucial to the war effort. You got to admit, it is absolutely remarkable in the way it challenges conventional notions about women. They look like they are an army. Right . 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 defense. The only posted that i have ever found that the government issued featuring working women was the one on the right. In this case, you can 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 folk behind as they went off to war was a popular motif. There were romantic pictures of soldiers and their sweethearts like this one im hitting the trail to normandy, so kiss me goodbye. With the man and woman locked in a passionate embrace. This one was more erotically charged than most images of the sort, but it seems to emphasize that war is mens work , and they frame military service not just in terms of defending their country, but of also protecting their female dependence 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 in newspapers and magazines of womens war effort seized on the way in which women were breaking new ground. As one woman wrote in a 1918 Magazine Article she is everywhere a Salvation Army lassie, serving coffee and doughnuts on the firing line, in the red cross Emergency Hospital at the front, in the munitions factory at home filling the gaps in manmade , industry everywhere. The media was absolutely fascinated by the way in which women were taking on jobs male. Ht to be i should point out that it wasnt the case that more women were working during the war, but rather that they were working at 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, im giving you my absolutely favorite image. This is from the philadelphia inquirer. It features an illustration of seven powder workers, which were munitions workers in a new jersey plant. The women are dressed in identical overalls and a simple cap. Their arms are around each other and they look boldly into the camera. Their smiles are bright and suggest the light, if not in the work they are doing, in having their pictures taken. The merry nature of the group photographed like this reinforces a sense of shared identity among the women as the much celebrated munitions workers. The text that accompanies the images 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 oan iowa newspaper offers a photograph of a pantswearing when nations worker standing at a formidable looking machine and explaining women workers at the frank Vogel Frankford arsenal designed the outfits the u. S. Government adopted for the use working in their plants. This attention to womens working clothes is absolutely crucial. It underscores the novelty of women taking on what were formerly mans jobs, and this will persist in the were years excuse me, this will persist in the war years for most. Although there were also slight changes in costumes for women not working in industries, for example, in the past, they were they wore a white blouse and a dark, simple skirt. The only thing that happens during the war for the kind of clothing is the hemlines go up slightly. But, for the women whose jobs require pants, overalls, or skirted uniforms, they were really breaking dramatically with convention. There masculinized clothes symbolized the way they were taking on mens jobs, especially elevator operators, conductors and alike were notable in that their apparel was linked to the notion of a military uniform. They used this type of uniform that suggested that womens work was part of their service to the nation in times of war. They were thus an expression of citizenship. Images of the crossdressing signaled the boundarycrossing new woman. It wasnt that women were just working in factories or railroads or streetcars who were wearing all these uniforms, women who served abroad as nurses, social workers, telephone operators, or volunteered at home for government quasi governmental agencies received extensive publicity about their uniforms. A ywca this one is it should be a ymca worker the Young Mens Christian Association created canteens at the front and hired women to run them. Fairly typical of the kind of image that appeared in the media. Here, 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 enormously military truck. Thats very common that women are shown in that way abroad. My favorite image is one the museum has, but its not as good as the copy that i bought for my inhouse. It is a little bizarre to 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 ywca is not messing around in the way it talks about women being the second line of defense and this is quite extraordinary. The telephone operator in a neat uniform, competently at work at her switchboard, but behind her is the backdrop of a scene of uniformed men in battle. She, like the men, is clearly at the front, a message that her military uniform underlined. I wanted to just emphasize that it is not just women abroad, but women at home, women that worked for the red cross, who were raising funds for the liberty loan, who may be working for other nongovernmental agencies. All had uniforms and were constantly being discussed in magazines and newspapers. And so this is a good example some of these are women abroad, but otherwise, you can see the women farmer, you have a driver, and the woman driver 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 homefront volunteers received their clearest expression of citizenship and the boundary new woman, in the newspaper and magazine coverage of parades, such as the liberty bond parades or the red cross ones. These, too, emphasized the uniformed women. I think this is a remarkable 1 it is taking place in new york, its a voluntary association of women, and you can see how clearly their uniforms are modeled after male uniforms of the time. This one i think is also particularly interesting. These are canteen workers for the National League for women service, an ngo at the time. They are walking down fifth avenue. So, sort of the iconic place where you have military parades , and hear these women are as part of i think this is a red cross 1 with their flags, their uniforms in perfect step, i think it illustrates my point beautifully. And for a little local color, this is young women or girls in kansas city. These are red cross volunteers in high school being seen marching in their uniforms, which is very typical of red cross parades to have children of various sorts all in uniform. Before the war, it was considered radical for respectable women to be in a public place like this. The Suffrage Movement began its parades in 1910 and they were really considered a major challenge to respectable notions of womens behavior. This bold occupation space that happens during the war, was an important demonstration of womens legitimacy as political actors. But its contested, there are people who are nervous about this. I think it is really significant that women played such an important part in patriotic parades. Now the coverage of wageearning women or overseas workers, at home volunteers offers a , pervasive vision of white women inhabiting space, public space previously thought to be exclusively male. This transgression was generally legitimated in the context of a National Crisis that literally required that women step outside convention. If not all women donned male attire or mannish uniforms or took to the street to join male citizens in parading for the national cause, many did, and their action garnered extensive publicity that offered the American Public a sense, often a striking visual one, that the new woman often debated in the years before the war had seized the war as an opportunity for challenging gender conventions in the name of patriotism. And this same kind of thing we , will see when we switch to film. And here again, there are both images that represent conventional women and images that are challenging them. 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 featured battles, as you might expect. But there was another genre that focused on war and the home front, and domestic issues, and 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. But others portrayed modern women who themselves were eager to seek to battle the enemy themselves. , significant number of films even those that featured the modern strong women turned on the theme of rape and assault to stress womens vulnerability. And i am going to turn to that for a few minutes. To get to that, i have to go back to up rent media firmament print media for a moment. Im sure any of you have seen posters like this. A couple of these are in the museum. For contemporary viewers, remember belgium it would evoke the brutal deaths of children and the rape of women that were the subject of extensive british propaganda. Although the propaganda was undoubtedly exaggerated, wartime rape certainly did take place , and theres certainly no doubt that the American Public had a perception of german soldiers as. He brutish hans destroy this mad brute is another good example of this. It was originally a british 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 of depicting racial others as apelike hulks. It specifically enjoins popular stereotypes of racial others, both immigrants and blacks as threats to pure, white womanhood. And, by extension, the nature the nation itself. Didhe last one, we have to a bit. The womans form across uncle sams lap is the iconic representation we talked about earlier, but here, was supposed to connect the concept of a womans honor, in other words, her chastity with the nations. With the nations. This visual merging of womens virtue with National Honor signaled the way which wartime representation of sexual violation symbolized the threat to both patriarchal and national power. So it is not surprising that we see this theme repeatedly and films. One of the most important ones , a dwarts of the world griffith film. You can still see it. Its from 1918 and centers on a small village in france where two young americans, marie and douglas, fall in love. But their wedding plans are this opted, to say the least, by the coming of the war. He decides to fight for france and then the film details the brutish hans in many ways. The young women of the village are sexually assaulted by drunken germans. Marie is reduced to slave labor essentially, in a potato field. So, the poster advertising this film features that exact act with lillian gish, the actress who plays marie being whipped by the evil germans. Marie is also cornered by the according to photoplay, quote he cornered , her behind a locked door, chuckling, muttering vile words in german, running a lascivious hands over her arms and shoulders as he held her close. Thats the picture from the still and also in photoplay. The end comes when marie escapes to the attic where she finds douglas, who had disappeared as they await their inevitable capture, they pledge their marriage vows and marie 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 are 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 u. S. Melodrama and it was certainly not unique to the war. If you have seen the pretty vile birth of a nation it centers around the rape of a white woman by newly freed slaves and guess what . One of the stars of birth of a nation is lillian gish. The same character here. The audience makes the connections. Its very clear. War films ubiquitous use of this 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 one of the central ways in which propaganda was portrayed to americans. For men, support to the war came framed as protection for their families. Hollywoods use of this rape imagery supports allied war aims, obviously, but its a vehicle for reinscribing victorian notions about womens sexual passivity and vulnerability. Another genre which one critic one historian has called the slacker film, talks about the dangerous side of familial love. There are at least a dozen of these enlistment dramas or slacker films that feature an overly protective mother who tries to keep her son from enlisting. A 1918 film features a mother who alters her sons birth certificate to make him ineligible for service. According to photo play, the mother is a strange study in affection and unscrupulous this. Ness. Scrupulous one of the suggestions for how to advertise a film to distributors it was to use spiders in their display for window work. It says use dried or artificial spiders. These are stills from the film. The film 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 one woman 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 enlist. He must defy his mother and be a real man. Here she is congratulating him and you notice the mother is long gone. This is, i think, quite interesting. She is the all american girl. She is modern, shes the representation of young, modern womanhood. And it is not the mothers, but the young women in these types of films who are the vehicles for restoring the mans manhood, his patriotism. If mothers are 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. In numerous war films, women showed bravery and resources and in many cases even crossdress, wearing mens clothes for part of the film. These brave women were not new to the film era, the war era, and the serial films that targeted mostly workingclass women featured heroines who acted in unconventional ways, courting and escaping danger, showing pluck and derringdo. And we see it in world war i, it is following something that came slightly before. The most significant serial during the war is a series called patria. It went from 1916 to 1917. The vast majority of the film is lost, but like most serials of the time, they are summarized every week with photographs or images so you know what happens. Film historians are interested because it was a vehicle for William Randolph 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 was before the zimmerman telegram, so it is his idea. Here, i want to focus on the representation of patria, played by irene castle. Week after week, she and her boyfriend and federal agent, conveniently, face one horrific threat after another. She proved herself to be an ace pilot, a fearless defender of herself and others. One reviewers breathless comment is worth repeating at length. They seem to think she did her own stunts. It is long, it is worth it. She is thrown from a bucking horse, dives from the deck of an oceangoing steam and swims onto a motorboat onto it she climbs unassisted. She climbs onto the mast of a burning ship and plunges over a waterfall into the whirlpool, she races her motor against a railroad car loaded with dynamite, she flies an airplane, she operates a machine gun and 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 is an one 15minute segment, possibly. The emphasis on the 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 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 serial, the mexican and japanese armies invade the United States at the border. Shes put in charge of her army and so she has to come in and take charge and, as you might imagine, the invasion was repelled. The series ends with the couple committing themselves 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 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 in an number of hairraising adventures. I want to conclude with two films, both of which you can see if you wish. They are starring Mary Pickford, who was already a major star in the teens. The love for her curls and winsome performance in which she invariably played young girls, not women. In her two warrelated films, she took on a more mature persona. In johanna and lift, it features a lonely young girl stuck on a farm with very strict parents. Shes bored, miserable and then the army camps on her fathers ground. So now, things are great and shes having a terrific time. She falls in love with an impressive army officer. When hes is ready to go abroad, 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, it shows the boys marching away suithe is in a soldiers 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 in this military uniform. The reason for this is a she was very much engaged in promoting the war. She adopted the 143rd Field Artillery unit and her troops are part of the film. Her contribution to the war effort was a significant part of her public image during the war. She appeared both with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks as well as a loan to sell war bonds. She offered rousing orations, encouraging men to enlist and women to get their men today to the colors. She attracted thousands of spectators and became the most wellknown female supporter of the war. There is no reason to think this is a publicity technique, but certainly, her studio made the most of it, as you might imagine. In the little american, one of the films posters im sorry, i forgot to give you another cool piece i will go back. You have seen these, i think. If you are a regular museum person, you know them. On the one hand, they seem 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 sexy. They are trading on their sexuality. I would say the same thing of the former picture of Mary Pickford. Shes not supposed to be powerful. The uniform is almost reemphasizing her femininity. The images are not very radical. This is the one i was talking about from the little american. Here, what the Publicity Department has done is turn Mary Pickford into america, into lady liberty. They have taken that notion of the way in which posters present the iconic lady liberty, and there she is, americas sweetheart. This is also during world war i when she got that name. This film is fascinating. She plays an adult woman. There is an interesting correspondence between demille and jeffrey lasky, and lasky wanted for lasky pickford to portray a girl in a role that feminists in the country are interested in. The kind of girl who jumps in and does a mans work when the matter at the front line. Carrie doesnt quite do this, but she is remarkably competent and confident. Angela moore is in washington, d. C. And has two suitors. One french, and one german. They both go off to fight for their respective countries and shortly thereafter, angela, a neutral american sales to europe to help her aunt in belgium. This film came out before the u. S. Entered the war. The boat is torpedoed and the disaster scene on the ship is specifically designed to evoke the lusitania disaster. The rescue boat, we get the first hint of angelas smokiness spunkiness. She shakes her fist at the submarine commander and holding up the flag exclaims you fired on american women and children. By the time she reaches the chateau, the germans are fast approaching. Her aunt has died and she is in charge. Her major goal is to try to protect her female servant, and 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 beau, carl. In the dark, he almost rapes her. Once she recognizes him, she chastises him for becoming part of the military machine and together, they hear the offscreen rape of a servant woman. She says to carl, if there is a spark of manhood in you, go and save 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 red and white and blues. Then you have this pastel image, straight out of victorian representation of the passive, genteel women who are the victims of war, the silent sufferers. It shows the way the film is struggling with both types of representation. Through a complex set of developments which you will be happy to know im not going to detail, it goes on. Angela fights for the french and is encouraged by carl who has come to her side. He redeems himself, in other words, by his effort. They are caught and they are facing a firing squad, but jules arrives and saves them both. But theres still a huge disaster and it is mary who saves carl from death. So she again is quite the heroin. She is resolute in her determination to do what is right. She emerges as an independent, plucky woman, who thinks nothing of going to belgium in the midst of war and when she becomes entangled in the war, shes resourceful and brave in saving herself and the man she loves. This plucky heroin certainly signaled challenges to conventional notions about womens essentially passive role in war. They save themselves and others, they become orders, they serve as nurses abroad. More dramatically, movie heroines like patria or angela challenge barriers to notions of womens conventional and respectable behavior by taking on the anomie firsthand and the enemy firsthand and winning. The radical potential of this challenge, i would say, is constrained by the emphasis on femininity and the predictable 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 independence but ultimately convey the limits of wartime opportunities for significant changes in womens roles. In world war i print dental print and film media, conventional images of women, especially those that feature their sexual vulnerability coexisted with more modern representations. The juxtaposition of the two suggest a way in which the era was suffused with tension about the changing roles of american women. Clearly the media recognized and , provocatively pictured a potential for dramatic change in womens life. Working women challenged mens prerogative, never more obviously than when they donned overalls and uniforms, parading women who took their patriotism to the street also suggested many women were eager to move beyond the constraints of home and family to a larger arena. Many film heroines were resourceful and independent. American audiences were relentlessly exposed to women who challenged conventions in work, clothing, and freedom of movement, in the occupation of public space. So much so that many were convinced 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, their Job Opportunities evaporated when war was ended. So, 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 to images 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 bow. 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 by the 1920s, all of the representations of challenge that featured strong, resourceful, independent women in politics and work have really 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] you are welcome to come down to either microphone or you can raise your hand and i will come to you. You described how the wave of change for women began before 1940 and i wonder if you can draw a relationship between the wave of immigration in the early 20th century and what followed in the first and second decades . Dr. Dumenil thats a really good question i tend to always say that so i have to find a different response. [laughter] 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 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 workingclass women. I definitely think there is a link there. Does that speak to your question . Thank you. Yes . Im wondering about the relationship between the Russian Revolution and the role of women, especially in 1917, 1918 . Dr. Dumenil that is another really good question. There are a lot of different ways to talk about it. One of the things that was exciting for people at the time and scandalous was that russian women served in uniform. One of them was called the battalion of death and the leader of it comes to the United States and is highly touted and interviewed. There is a movie, a really cheesy one, based on this story as well. That is part of it, that there is something going on here, that women are not just serving as support for troops, but there is actually an example of women who are really challenging it. It is a long, complicated story tied into the revolution, obviously. The thing i really like about it is american women journalists go russia come in to do so, it isrussia, but to do so scary. You get on the siberian express and get there and they go out with the women and interviewed them. So it helps to increase the publicity that something is really afoot. The women journalists are 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. So they just move right into the war in that way. So you speak to some interesting points. Did i answer enough of your question . Did you have Something Else in mind . Would you give me the name of the journalists . Dr. Dumenil one of them was called madeleine doty. Another is betsy beatty who went to occidental college. And im having a senior moment louise was one of them. My husband is also a historian and thinks she wrote the book, not read. So there you go. There is actually a book by a mcinberg. D julia it includes american women as well. My mom was in the british army in world war ii. The way she described it at the time, after france fell, it was all hands on deck in britain that, no matter who you were, you were going to serve 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 and Downton Abbey and all of that kind of stuff. There was still a nobility around where the u. S. Really didnt have a nobility that could influence things in such a way. We were more democratic, so to speak. Im wondering what that effect might have had on british women during world war i . Dr. Dumenil as you know, britain is in pretty dire straits during world war i. They are losing men that they men at a rate they could never have imagined, at about 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, and they hired british women as secretaries in france. So i would say there is a real sense of urgency 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. So its not quite the same willingness to do it, but there is much more than in the United States, because the british war is much different than the american war. I sometimes feel odd when i talk about american women for example who go abroad. They are acting like they are having a great time. Its like a vacation. They are excited, its adventuresome, and part of my explanation is they are there for a very short time and they havent experienced the devastation of war the way europeans did. So there are real differences between americans, british, french, german, and the like. Thank you. The doctor will be in the lobby if you have more questions, on behalf of the National World war i museum and memorial, thank you for coming and another round of applause for dr. Dumenil. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this is American History tv, covering history cspan style with others, historians, and teachers. 48 hours all weekend every weekend, only on cspan3. This week on the presidency, we will see abraham lincolns summer cottage, and hear stories of the kennedys, clintons, and obamas in marthas vineyard. Here is a preview. Porch. We are on the hooverhave told me that was a dour man without humor. I doubt that, but i think it is fun that he named this the brown house, get it . White house, brown house. Of peace anda lot rejuvenation from the outdoors. Designed, shewas wanted to look for ways to bring the outdoors in and provide Great Outdoor spaces. All of the cabins had huge, ecks. Rful d i want you to notice this panel right here in the hinges. We will talk more about that. It looks like there is a problem. If you look down here, you see a whole in the deck. That was done on purpose. They were big levers of nature and didnt want to cut down the tree and they let it grow into the porch and into the roof. It had to be taken out in later years. Lets look inside and see these spaces she created. They came often in one of the things that happened and evolved about the camp is they started to use it as a working retreat, as well as a recreational retreat. Hoover would have deemed andends themed weekends he wanted to isolate them so they could have his questions. One weekend he invited Charles Lindbergh and several other people and they discussed the possibility of airmail. That was something he did a lot. Here is what i wanted to talk about that window. This is the inside of the panel. Because she wanted to bring the outdoors in, she created panels. Was canvas. Ion and since what they had at first. There was this flapping and it drove them nots, plus they wanted to be able to come more often in the chillier month. They enclosed them, but because she love the idea of the tent flaps, so she created wooden ones that came down. Over here, you can see the windows filled out. So she is bringing the outdoors in. Learn more about president ial retreat this sunday here on American History tv. Winston moore talks about the nixon administrations Foreign Policy approach. He is the author of kissinger on kissinger. Nixonsibes president relationship with Henry Kissinger and how it was detrimental in developing Foreign Policy it good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is jonathan. I am with the Richard Nixon foundation and welcome to the Richard Nixon library. Before we introduce our speaker i wanted to mention a couple of special guests. E have our speakers daughter and her husband. [applause] we have the wife of our president and ceo. [applause]