ipl-logo

American Women In 1914 Essay

690 Words3 Pages

Due to the great numbers of men who joined World War I, European women’s lives were altered because they were a greater part of the industrial workforce. As World War I, or the ‘Great War,’ as it was called then, arrived in Europe, many men left the industrial workforce to go fight in the war. As a result, women’s role in providing things like food to soldiers and doing industrial work became vital to their countries and the industrial revolution. Most women were considered to be not for the army, so they worked in the fields or in factories across Europe. The experience of the war altered the European women’s lives because, not only were many of their husbands in the army, leaving them at home to do work and take care of household needs, but many of them were utilized in a fashion which provided the necessities of the war and gave women adequate pay. …show more content…

According to document 7, when the war started in 1914 only 32% of the workforce was women. However, by the next year it was up to 40%, and that is where the number remained until after the war in 1919, when it dropped back down to 36%. It can be clearly understood from this that women became a major part of the workforce as soon as the war started, and this didn’t let up until after, when men came back from war and became the bread and butter of the workforce. Document 3 alludes to the tough work which peasant women had to go through during the war. It states that the workload of these women since the men left to fight was difficult in an unimaginable way. However, despite the “crushing weight of physical and emotional fatigue,” they worked through it like men so that the actual men could have what was necessary for

Open Document