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Women During Ww1

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Canadian Women’s Contribution to the war effort /5 The contribution of Canadian women during WW1 is undisputed in having massive impact on societal perceptions of women. While men were conscripted to fight across the sea, women were left to fill the holes in the economy and take up jobs so as to keep workplaces running smoothly. Before the war, women were not able to vote, own land, receive extensive education, or take opportunities that arose in the workplace. But, as the war progressed, more and more women were able to go overseas to serve primarily as nurses. Over 80,000 volunteered to serve as nursing assistants in Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD), and Canadian nurses were able to hold the same ranking as officers in the Allied forces. …show more content…

When the war broke out and men left to serve, many jobs were left unfulfilled, and it became the job of the woman to take up work in order to support their husbands across the sea. Citizens were expected to provide maximum effort, and many women went into munitions work, so as to directly impact the war with their help. As a political move, women were temporarily given the right to vote, provided that they had direct family serving in the war. This was the War Time Elections Act, and its goal was to gain political favour, as well as votes, during the conscription crisis. The Canadian government saw that the wives and mothers of soldiers were most likely to support conscription. Though women were able to see some growth in the amount of equality they received, the hope for a truly equal society diminished somewhat as the men started to return from war. Women saw some of these liberties being taken away. Emboldened by the taste of freedom and of free will, the suffrage movement began to change the attitude towards the traditional “Motherly” roles that women were expected to fill. Many women fought to, and succeeded in, keeping their jobs, and over 1.2 million women had permanent jobs,as opposed to the measly 600 thousand before the war. The many female led organizations of this time were directly linked to the suffrage movement, and the fight for equal rights became a hotly discussed and controversial

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