As I mentioned yesterday,
there’s been an International Women’s Day since 1908, but the reasons for
considering the contributions women make to society have often been forgotten.
I mean, aside from providing generations of men with socially acceptable sex
and making sandwiches.
For some time after the
Soviet Union led the way in extending the vote to women (in 1917), the notion
of an entire day to celebrate women-in-the-world (as opposed to the little lady
hidden away in domesticity) manifested itself predominantly in socialist
countries until what you might call Women’s Movement 2.0—Women’s
Liberation—inspired the United Nations to affirm it in 1975.
That would have been
around the time that products and advertising were trying to capitalize on the new-fangled
idea of the independent woman (kind of a 1970’s flapper) with more than an
allowance from a husband to spend. So you got this campaign:
(Interestingly, only when I when hunting for images of these ads did I realize that all the models are anorectic. Way to drive home the brand, Phillip Morris.)
What that slogan trivialized was how much women had earned the right to more than a lady-cigarette that’s thinner than what the blokes smoke. (You’d think Pepsico might have taken that aboard when they announced their plans earlier this year to market lady-chips—Doritos that don’t make that oh-so masculine crunching sound. But that would be ascribing more perspicacity to junk food manufacturers.)
What that slogan trivialized was how much women had earned the right to more than a lady-cigarette that’s thinner than what the blokes smoke. (You’d think Pepsico might have taken that aboard when they announced their plans earlier this year to market lady-chips—Doritos that don’t make that oh-so masculine crunching sound. But that would be ascribing more perspicacity to junk food manufacturers.)
Since I’m a New Military
historian, I’m going to skip over contributions like business acumen,
scientific research and sandwich making, and consider how they supported the defeat
of Germany and her allies in World War I, and the fight against global fascism
in World War II.
The 1914-18 war saw them
entering factories and taking over farm work in astonishing numbers. Women’s
labor not only freed men to enter the meat-grinder of trench warfare, it
provided them with the armaments, the equipment and the provisions to carry it
on. And while they for the most part stayed away from the front lines (some extraordinary
women did serve in field dressing stations, and many more drove ambulances,
were nurses and even ran military hospitals) their work was not without danger.
Munitions workers were
not only killed in factory explosions; they also died from inhaling the toxic
fumes that surrounded them during their long shifts.
Uniformed services in
the First World War dipped their feet into accepting women into their ranks (in
addition to nursing), in very limited and strictly temporary programs. The
instant the Armistice was declared, they were chucked out, although, in
fairness, the services demobbed the men almost as quickly.
Come about 20 years
later, we had to do it all over again. This time, women went into the offices,
the farms and the factories in much greater numbers.
In the United States,
women pilots weren’t allowed to join the uniformed services, so they performed
“lesser” tasks—they ferried planes around the country and across the Atlantic,
test flew new aircraft, performed training. One particularly dangerous job was
towing targets behind them across the sky for anti-aircraft gunner training.
Think about that one.
(Women in the Soviet
Union did not face those kinds of restrictions. They served in combat both on
the ground and in the air.)
Women who did join our
armed services mostly did administrative work here in the states. Except for
nurses, they were forbidden to leave the continental United States; naturally
there was no question of combat for them.
Some numbers were
recruited from women’s and teachers’ colleges for incredibly stressful and very
critical work in secret squirrel activities here in the District: they were
instrumental in breaking German and Japanese military and diplomatic codes,
both as civilians and in the Army and the Navy. Their work contributed to
turning the progress of the war in both theatres.
The government chose
women for cryptanalysis for a number of reasons: with very few exceptions, all
able-bodied men were needed for combat; it was grueling, tedious
attention-to-detail labor that people thought women excelled at; the education
at the Seven Sisters and similar schools turned out intelligent women across a
range of disciplines—mathematicians, scientists, linguists, logicians—that were
all key to breaking codes; graduates of teaching colleges—i.e., teachers—were
used to backbreaking work for low pay.
After V-J Day, once
again the women in the factories were sent home and their jobs given to
returning GIs. Those in the military were told to resign and the female units
were reduced to barely-there numbers.
These days, we’ve got
women flying combat missions, performing critical functions on warships and serving in combat units on the ground, with
many more in support functions so close to the fighting that they’re getting
shot at regardless of their designation. And—as of a year ago there’s a woman
in the Rangers. Much more of this and we’ll catch up to the Soviets of 75 years
ago.
You have come a long way,
baby
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