The roles of women have evolved a great deal, and it has been known that such progress typically takes place in the midst of war: when the capabilities of a country are stretched, so are its social rules. I believe that the role of women in both world wars was to stay at home and sport the home front until the situation became so dire that the government was forced to ask women to take some duty for the war. In WWI, they hired women as nurses and telephone operators overseas. In WWII they needed army plane pilots. The first ever all women’s pilot program, known as WASP, was founded on experimental grounds to meet the need for pilots to fly the planes coming off of assembly lines and the demand for supplies to be flown from one place to another.
The only apparent difference in combat was that in WWI, the soldiers loved having the women around. However in WWII, the soldiers made it very clear that they disapproved of women flying planes for the military. After the conclusion of both wars, women’s roles fell back into their previous mold. After WWI, women returned to their homemaking, and after WWII, women were not able to fly for the army for another thirty years. This proves that total war has forced exceptions to gender roles onto society that the majority of the population was not psychologically prepared for.
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I like how you compared the role of women in WWI and WWII instead of just stating what their role was in each. I thought that their roles were fairly different, but you show that, in the end, it really was the same because the change was only temporary. Overall, I thought this piece was very thought-provoking especially the part about how war forces us to make changes we are not prepared for.
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