A long way

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.)

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