An author talks about the second line of defense, american women in world war i, examining the different roles, including participation in the workforce, media, and propaganda. The museum in kansas city, missouri hosted this event and provided the video. This evening, we are really thrilled to have our guest with us. Thank you for making the journey. She will have a conversation with us, make a presentation with us for about 45 minutes, after which there will be a cue and a time and there are microphones on each side. Camille will help navigate that and those of you who are unable to come to the mic, just let her know and we can accommodate that. Afterwards, theres a book signing you will have seen this book in the lobby and sean is there, able to take your credit card and lynn will be ready to sign it. Its not too early to be making christmas gifts. So get all that shopping done well before youll. Doctor lynn dumenil is the robert glass professor of history at oxford college. She is taught at a number of distinguished institutions including berkeley, Witman College in Claremont Mckenna college, she specializes in u. S. Womens history and cultural and social history since the civil war. She is a distinguished professor many honors. Including being a senior broad lecturer at the university alley, full bright lecture, and many other recognitions, which is all to say that we are in for a treat. She brings to this topic a richness that i think will make this experience one of real memory for us. So once again, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here and for participating in the activities of the National WorldWar One Museum and memorial. I invite you back. Please join me in welcoming doctor lynn dumenil. applause thank you. I am really delighted to be here. I want to thank the museum for inviting me, but also tell camille 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, it 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 in munitions factories, they served as nurses and other aides to the military machine. And much more bureaucratically than women had worked for war than in the past. It is actually tied to the nature of a 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 that somehow, since the war, 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 their marker for explaining what they thought were the extraordinary changes in the 1920s. And this is particularly true for how people talked about women. It is very interesting because right before the war, americans started talking about this new women. 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 flappers, as you may be used to thinking about her, was a stereotype and she really only described to any great extent, young, white, privileged women. But even though we can 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. According to frederik lewis allen. After the war women quote poured out of schools and colleges into all manners of occupation. Causing as he put it, to quote, slackening of parental and husband lee authority. Encouraging the quote headlong pursuit of freedom. And widely, during world war one, dramatic changes did seem imminent. Militant women suffered supporters were outraging the nation by picketing the white house. Women were taking jobs formerly thought to be exclusively appropriate for men. 25,000 women served overseas as support for the troops. Millions did highly visible work at home. But was the war really transformative . Most of the changes that observers saw in the 1920s, we can really see is early as 1910. For example, in 1910, marks a significant upswing in womens participation in the workforce, not 1920. The teens were also extremely important in terms of women in politics, the progressive reform air assault womens heightened political involvement and most importantly, the Suffrage Movement had heat it up in the teens. By 1914, 11 states had already passed womens suffrage. Yes so before the war, americans were talking and recognizing that women were challenging conventional rules and they were very ambivalent about this change. And 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 war sent. Like that. Historians, myself included, dont really think the war was that transformative. It wasnt causal. But we still need to account for observers in the 1920s sense of social change since the war. And for that matter, we need to understand the common belief during the war that much change was in effect in terms of womens roles. These beliefs suggest that the war became a marker for consciousness concerning the emergence of the new woman. So what i am arguing here is that the war accelerated developments already underway. But specifically heightened awareness of this emerging and contestant 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. 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 that in mainstream popular culture, women of of color were virtually invisible. In reporting about womens war mobilization. This doesnt mean they werent there, of course. In los angeles, for example, mexican american, japanese american and African American women were active in red cross auxiliaries that raised funds and provided knitted goods. When the war extended to the great migration of African Americans to cities in the south and north, migrants included women who found new opportunities beyond domestic and agricultural labor. But although we can find evidence of their participation, especially that of black women, the modern woman so celebrated during the war and after was in part to find 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 roles and suggested the possibility for cultural and social change. And political change, to. 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. Even in the museum, youve seen many images like this, a beautiful woman in this case, flanked by the United States flags are driven dressed in the stars and stripes, symbolize to what the nation was fighting for, and often wasing 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 woman with the nation state. These were heroic figures, not real women, and the iconography was deeply rooted in western european arts 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 of raping a woman in the flag to represent liberty, right . But the other thing that is really great about this is that you can see at the bottom, it says made in america. And made is spelled maid its pretty witty on the part of the editor of this black newspaper to comment on the type of work that women were allowed to do. And inside the magazine, they often said that 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 its a good counter to the rest of the things you are going to see. Im going to move to some of the government posters that were issued at the time. For the most part, they follow these very conventional patterns. Posters frequently used, excuse me, i missed something. Posters represented actual women in these cases. It encourage them to participate in war activities, including farming in the womens land army, or buying liberty bonds, or needing socks, or conserving food. They rarely challenged ideas of womens proper place and i think you can see that very clearly in the lovely woman in her wed list kitchen, the lovely grandmother, warm and welcoming her sons to win the war and 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 this 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. Its a pieta it shows power, but it shows women in maternal power, right . 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 were workers where the second line of defense. On the left, you will see a poster created by the ymca. It is not a government poster and it is very typical of the wide to represent winning being crucial to the war effort. And this, youve got to admit, its absolutely remarkable in the way it challenges conventional notions about women. They look like theyre an army, they are carrying heavy equipment, wrenches in the like, and it is reminding them that women are an army. They are backing our second line of defense. The only poster that have ever found that the government issued fixturing a working woman was the one on the right. In this case, you can see that 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 a government propaganda, commercial media usually portrayed women in traditional roles as well. Poignant depictions of soldiers leaving their womenfolk behind as they went off to war, was a popular motif and there were romantic pictures of soldiers and their sweethearts, like this one. Im hitting the trail to normandy, so kissed 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 nonetheless 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 did not challenge generals, they were very evident, there were alternative representations of women in war. In particular, coverage in newspapers and magazines of womens war efforts seized upon the way in which women were breaking new ground. As one woman wrote in a 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 munitions factory at home, filling the gaps in manmade industry everywhere. The media was absolutely fascinated by the way women were taking on jobs thought to be mail. And i should point out that it wasnt the case 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 in an expansion of their numbers. Support my suggestion of how engaged the media was, im giving you my absolutely favorite image. This is from the philadelphia enquirer and it features an illustration of several powder workers, munitions workers, theyre in a new jersey plant. The women are dressed in identical overalls with simple cap. Their arms around each other, and they look boldly into the camera. There are smiles are bright and suggest the light, if not in the work they are doing, and having their pictures taken. The very nature of the Group Photograph like this moreover reinforces a sense of shared identity among the women as the much celebrated munitions workers. The text that accompanies the images says, 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, an island newspaper offers a photograph of a pants wearing munitions worker standing at a formidable looking machine and explaining that women workers at the frankfurt arsenal new jersey designed the outfit that the u. S. Government had been adopted for use working and their plants. This attention to womens working clothes is absolutely crucial. It underscores the novelty of women taking on what were formerly mens jobs. And this would persist in the warriors. This would persist in the warriors for most. Although there were also some slight changes in costumes for women not working in industry. For example, in the past, they were a white blouse and a dark, simple skirt. The only thing that happens during the war for that kind of clothing is that the hemlines go up slightly. But for the women whose new jobs require pants, overalls, or skirted uniforms, they were really breaking dramatically with convention. Theyre masculine iced clothes symbolize the way in which they were taking on male jobs. And women who wore uniforms, especially conductors, elevator operators and the like, were notable and thats their apparel was linked to the notion of a military uniform. They used to this type of uniform and 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 cross dressing worker signals a boundary crossing new woman. 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 government or quasigovernmental agencies, received extensive publicity about their uniforms. Here, this one is a why it should be ymca worker, the young mens christian association, creating canteens at the front and hired women to run them. This is fairly typical of the type of image that appeared in the media and in here, what i think is interesting is that not only is she wearing her uniform, and looking boldly into the camera, but shes next to an enormous military truck. Thats very common that 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 top of the copy that i bought for my own house. Its a little bizarre, i will admit, to have a world war i poster in your living room. But i love it, so i did it. It was a present to me. Remember, the why w. C is not messing around in the way in which it talks about women being part of the second line of defense and this is really quite extraordinary the operator the telephone operators in her neat uniform shes competently it work at her switchboard, but behind her is the backdrop of a really teaming of uniform men in battle. She, like the man is clearly at the front. A message that her military uniform underlines. And i wanted to emphasize that its not just women abroad that women at home who work for the men cross they might be working various other kinds of non governmental agencies, they all had uniforms and they 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 you have a woman farmer, you have a driver, the woman drivers next to the former. Shes very much like my lovely woman on the cover of my book. So the activities of women as we joiners, as overseas participants and home front volunteers receive their clearest expression of both citizenship and the boundary crossing new woman in the newspaper magazine coverage of parades. Such as a liberty bond parades or the red cross one. And these to emphasize the uniformed women. I think this is quite remarkable. One its taking place in new york its a motor course, its a voluntary association of women. 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, and ngo of the time. They are walking down fifth avenue so its the iconic place where you have military parades and hear these women are part of a red cross one, with the flags, their uniforms arent perfect step, i think it really illustrates my point beautifully. And for a little local color, this is young women or girls in kansas city. These are red cross volunteers who are in high school, and theyre 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 parades in 1910 and they were considered a major challenge to respectable notions of womens behavior. This bold occupation of public 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. So i think its really significant that women played such an important part in patriotic parades. The coverage of way journeying women or overseas workers, i volunteers, offers of vision of white women and