Feminism and Women's Voices in the World Wars

Personal Details Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University Paper Coordinator Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University Content Writer/Author (CW) Dr. Meenakshi Lucknow University Pawah Content Reviewer (CR) Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University Language Editor (LE) Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University, Allahabad (B) Description of Module Items Description of Module Subject Name Women’s Studies Paper Name Women & Literature Module Name/ Title Feminism and womens voices in the world wars Module ID Paper-2, Module-9 Pre-requisites Some awareness of the history of the World Wars Objectives To make the students aware of the impact of the wars on the lives of women Keywords Wars, attitudes, military, writings Feminism and Women’s Voices in the World Wars Introduction Women’s position during the Wars reflected a changing attitude towards their roles. Largely, this change began just before the outbreak of war, with the cry for women to have the vote, a movement, which sought improvement in their position in society which until then had disenfranchised them. Not only was there a cry for the vote, but, surprisingly to some, women also wished to take an active part in the war and not be excluded on the grounds of their gender. Women writers in the 20th century found it much more difficult than men to have their work published and consequently, their work is often less well known than the work of men of the same period. The reasons for this are not based on merit, but on the social and political climate of the time. Women’s writings on the First World War have been misunderstood as inauthentic and unrealistic. This is mostly due to the fact that, by 1914 and until late 1918, women did not do military service. Much of the testimony about the Great War has been dictated by male reports, or soldier’s accounts, in which men claimed exclusiveness: the combatant’s voice was more authentic or realistic than the civilian’s. Margaret Higonnet points out that many of the letters written by women in wartime were censored and/or confiscated; feminist newspapers often appeared blank and other forms of suppression took place; for example, Marcelle Capy’s collection of journalism, in Higonnet’s Lines of Fire: Women War Writers of World War I (1999), was not allowed to be reprinted. Unfortunately, most women’s writings on the war were seen as leading to misconceptions or simply disregarded by the time they were written. As Higonnet puts it: “Earlier historians’ and critics’ omission of women’s war experiences correspond to a belief that the record of the Great War was an exclusively masculine, veteran’s preserve, and that women therefore did not write about the war. We continue to encounter the thesis that women’s domestic condition, their lack of education, and their education in femininity prevented them from recording their experiences or reactions to public events, especially to “war”, understood to be a male domain. Until very recently, few women’s poems and stories were reprinted; their work was not mentioned in bibliographies devoted to the war; official archives gathered testimony almost exclusively from men (xxii).” The World Wars shook up gender relations, but only temporarily. Individual British women in the World Wars found new freedoms and opportunities in wartime – “like being let out of a cage,” in one woman’s words. However, gender changes were short-lived. “[A]ttitudes towards [women’s] roles at home and at work remained remarkably consistent over nearly fifty years. Both wars put conventional views about gender roles under strain,” but no permanent change occurred in hostility to women in male-dominated jobs, the devaluation of female labour, and the female-only responsibility for home life...Several major differences distinguish the two World Wars’ effects on women... Most importantly, in terms of gender roles, women in the military in the first war were “largely confined to very mundane work like cleaning, cooking, clerical work, waitressing, and some driving … But in 1939–45 in addition … women handled anti-aircraft guns, ran the communications network, mended aeroplanes and even flew them from base to base.” Nonetheless, gender relations quickly reverted to tradition after World War II as after World War 1(Goldstein np). In Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature(2005), Santanu Das refers to women as being “silent witnesses.” The author alludes to Vera Britain’s writing to her fiancé Roland Leighton in the trenches, describing her feelings as “the fraught relation to traumatic witnessing and the limits of empathy: in the awareness of the incommensurability and absoluteness of physical pain” (Das 177). Despite the general feeling of hopelessness, many women remained diligent and their social roles evolved in ways unexpected by their societies. Some were political activists, such as Alexandra Kollontai, Marcelle Capy, or Rebecca West. Others took part directly in war, like Katherine Hodges North, who enlisted in 1916 as an ambulance driver. Many others, like Vera Brittain (1893-1970), served as a nurse in the war and used her writing to describe the horror of losing loved ones and sharing the feelings of having her life completely shattered by the war. Feminism A clear understanding of the term feminism is crucial before one embarks on the topic of feminist writings. Feminism as a social, political , economic and intellectual movement has been defined variously over 200 years. The current consensus is that there is no one feminism, but, in fact, many traditions within a larger movement dedicated to securing equity for women (Boles et al).The feminist movement is sometimes said to have originated in the writings of the Greek poet Sappho, but this seems a pedantic claim given the thousands of years between Sappho’s life and any active organized effort to improve living conditions of women. “Simply put feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression”(hooks 1). This was the definition of feminism offered by bell hooks in her Feminist Theory:From Margin to Center more than a decade ago. Feminism has reshaped the overriding perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western society, ranging from culture to law. Feminist activists have crusaded for women's legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily integrity and autonomy, for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection of women and girls from domestic violence, against misogyny; and against other forms of gender-specific discrimination against women. The three Waves According to Maggie Humm(1945-) and Rebecca Walker(1969-), the history of feminism can be divided into three waves. The first feminist wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It manifests in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism. During much of its history, most of the feminist theorists and leaders of the feminist movements were predominantly middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America. However, at least since Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech to American feminists, women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms. Carleton Mabee and Susan Mabee Newhouse write in their book that “The haunting “Ar’n’t I a woman?” question, which Truth is reported to have used dramatically again and again in her speech, has become in our time a familiar slogan in the woman’s rights movement.” (67). This trend gained momentum in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in former European colonies and the Third World nations have proposed "Post-colonial" and "Third World" feminisms. Some Postcolonial Feminists, such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1955- ), disapprove of Western feminism for being ethnocentric. Black feminists, such as Angela Davis (1944- ) and Alice Walker(1944- ), share this view. French author and philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir(1908-1986) wrote that "the first time we see a woman take up her pen in defense of her sex" was Christine de Pizan(1364-c.1430) who wrote for the first time for women and about women. Pizan’s The Book of the City of Women (1405) argues that women need to build their own city, apart from men where they will not be attacked or slandered by men. Marie Le Jars de Gournay, Anne Bradstreet and Francois Poullain de la Barre wrote during the 17th century. The first wave feminism (1963–1991) This refers mainly to women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (mainly concerned with enfranchisement). The second wave refers to the ideas and actions associated with the women's liberation movement beginning in the 1960s (which campaigned for legal and social rights for women). The third wave refers to a continuation of, and a reaction to the perceived failures of, second-wave feminism, beginning in the 1990s.The term first wave was coined retrospectively after the term second-wave feminism began to be used to describe a newer feminist movement that laid as much emphasis on fighting social and cultural inequalities as political inequalities. First-wave feminism refers to the feminist activity during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the United Kingdom and the United States. Originally, the promotion of equal contract, property rights for women, the opposition to chattel marriage and ownership of married women (and their children) by their husbands were the points of focus.

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