Women Making War

Drawing on war propaganda, popular advertising, voluminous government records, and hundreds of letters and other accounts written by women in the 1940s, Melissa A. McEuen examines how extensively women's bodies and minds became "battlegrounds" in the U.S. fight for victory in World War II. Women were led to believe that the nation's success depended on their efforts--not just on factory floors, but at their dressing tables, bathroom sinks, and laundry rooms. They were to fill their arsenals with lipstick, nail polish, creams, and cleansers in their battles to meet the standards of ideal womanhood touted in magazines, newspapers, billboards, posters, pamphlets and in the rapidly expanding pinup genre. Scrutinized and sexualized in new ways, women understood that their faces, clothes, and comportment would indicate how seriously they took their responsibilities as citizens. McEuen also shows that the wartime rhetoric of freedom, democracy, and postwar opportunity coexisted uneasily with the realities of a racially stratified society. The context of war created and reinforced whiteness, and McEuen explores how African Americans grappled with whiteness as representing the true American identity. Using perspectives of cultural studies and feminist theory, Making War, Making Women offers a broad look at how women on the American home front grappled with a political culture that used their bodies in service of the war effort.

Partisan activities of disloyal women and the Union army’s reaction During the American Civil War, more than four hundred women were arrested and imprisoned by the Union Army in the St. Louis area. The majority of these women were fully aware of the political nature of their actions and had made conscious decisions to assist Confederate soldiers in armed rebellion against the U.S. government. Their crimes included offering aid to Confederate soldiers, smuggling, spying, sabotaging, and, rarely, serving in the Confederate army. Historian Thomas F. Curran’s extensive research highlights for the first time the female Confederate prisoners in the St. Louis area, and his thoughtful analysis shows how their activities affected Federal military policy. Early in the war, Union officials felt reluctant to arrest women and waited to do so until their conduct could no longer be tolerated. The war progressed, the women’s disloyal activities escalated, and Federal response grew stronger. Some Confederate partisan women were banished to the South, while others were held at Alton Military Prison and other sites. The guerilla war in Missouri resulted in more arrests of women, and the task of incarcerating them became more complicated. The women’s offenses were seen as treasonous by the Federal government. By determining that women—who were excluded from the politics of the male public sphere—were capable of treason, Federal authorities implicitly acknowledged that women acted in ways that had serious political meaning. Nearly six decades before U.S. women had the right to vote, Federal officials who dealt with Confederate partisan women routinely referred to them as citizens. Federal officials created a policy that conferred on female citizens the same obligations male citizens had during time of war and rebellion, and they prosecuted disloyal women in the same way they did disloyal men. The women arrested in the St. Louis area are only a fraction of the total number of female southern partisans who found ways to advance the Confederate military cause. More significant than their numbers, however, is what the fragmentary records of these women reveal about the activities that led to their arrests, the reactions women partisans evoked from the Federal authorities who confronted them, the impact that women’s partisan activities had on Federal military policy and military prisons, and how these women’s experiences were subsumed to comport with a Lost Cause myth—the need for valorous men to safeguard the homes of defenseless women.

Experience the incredible determination, resilience and sacrifice of Canadian women during the First and Second World Wars. War brought enormous changes to Canadian women's lives. They adapted to the conditions of total war in practical terms ? working, volunteering and serving in uniform. In the wake of war's inevitable tragedies, they also faced other challenges. The contributions made by women to the Canadian war efforts were crucial, and their experiences forged a new understanding of women's capabilities both within themselves and within society. Through photographs, artwork, diaries and mementoes, including a Memorial Cross presented to the mother of a fallen soldier, this souvenir catalogue reveals deeply personal stories of life in service and on the home front.

For the first time in history, women make up half the educated labor force and are earning the majority of advanced degrees. It should be the best time ever for women, and yet... it’s not. Storm clouds are gathering, and the worst thing is that most women don’t have a clue what could be coming. In large part this is because the message they’re being fed is that they now have it made. But do they? In The New Soft War on Women, respected experts on gender issues and the psychology of women Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett argue that an insidious war of subtle biases and barriers is being waged that continues to marginalize women. Although women have made huge strides in recent years, these gains have not translated into money and influence. Consider the following: - Women with MBAs earn, on average, $4,600 less than their male counterparts in their first job out of business school. - Female physicians earn, on average, 39 percent less than male physicians. - Female financial analysts take in 35 percent less, and female chief executives one quarter less than men in similar positions. In this eye-opening book, Rivers and Barnett offer women the real facts as well as tools for combating the “soft war” tactics that prevent them from advancing in their careers. With women now central to the economy, determining to a large degree whether it thrives or stagnates, this is one war no one can afford for them to lose.

Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportunities. But did it? Making the Best of It examines how gender and other identities intersected to shape the experiences of female Canadians and Newfoundlanders during the war. The contributors to this thoughtful collection consider mainstream and minority populations, girls and women, and different parts of Canada and Newfoundland in their essays. Ultimately, they lay a foundation for a better understanding of the ways in which the lives of Canadian women and girls were altered during and after the 1940s.

In the spirit of his successful books At Ease and Men of WWII, Evan Bachner now focuses on the women of WWII. While traditionally female secretarial and clerical jobs took an expectedly large portion of recruits, thousands of WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) performed previously atypical duties in the aviation community - such as Judge Advocate General corps - medical professions, communications, intelligence, science, and technology. The photography team, headed by legendary photographer Edward Steichen, captured these heroic women at work, rest, and play. All the photos are from the National Archives and most have not been previously published.

"A stunning portrayal of a tragedy endured and survived by women." --David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass "Readers expecting hoop-skirted ladies soothing fevered soldiers' brows will not find them here...It explodes the fiction that men fight wars while women idle on the sidelines." --Washington Post "As McCurry points out in this gem of a book, many historians who view the American Civil War as a 'people's war' nevertheless neglect the actions of half the people." --James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom "In this brilliant exposition of the politics of the seemingly personal, McCurry illuminates previously unrecognized dimensions of the war's elemental impact." --Drew Gilpin Faust, author of This Republic of Suffering The idea that women are outside of war is a powerful myth in western culture, one that shaped the Civil War and still determines how we write about it today. Through three dramatic stories that span the course of the war, this groundbreaking reconsideration invites us to see America's bloodiest conflict for what it was: not just a brothers' war but a women's war. When Union soldiers faced the unexpected threat of female partisans, saboteurs, and spies, long held assumptions about the innocence of enemy women were suddenly thrown into question. Stephanie McCurry shows how the case of Clara Judd, imprisoned for treason, transformed the writing of Lieber's Code, leading to lasting changes in the laws of war. Black women's fight for freedom had no place in the Union military's emancipation plans. Facing a massive problem of governance as former slaves fled to their ranks, officers re-classified black women as "soldiers' wives"--whether or not they were married--placing new obstacles on their path to freedom. Finally, Women's War offers a new perspective on the epic human drama of Reconstruction through the story of one slaveholding woman, Gertrude Thomas, whose losses went well beyond the material to intimate matters of family, love, and belonging. Thomas's response mixed grief with rage, recasting white supremacy in new, still relevant, terms.

Jean Elshtain examines how the myths of Man as "Just Warrior" and Woman as "Beautiful Soul" serve to recreate and secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors. Elshtain demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacrificial male love, as well as the moral imperatives of just wars.