Did the First World War Represent an Irrevocable Crisis of Gender in the Uk?
Did the First World War represent an irrevocable crisis of gender in the UK?
The act of war itself has, throughout history, come to be regarded as an engendering process, in some respects reinforcing and in others confusing the boundaries of gender definition. The First World War in particular represented a turning point in the discourse of gender within Britain. Previously, authority figures retained a seriously outdated perception of what it meant to be male or female. The government and military were the spheres most strongly associated with masculine traits. The idea that war served to turn boys into men was entrenched in the British public school system and in popular culture literature such as the writings of Rudyard Kipling. Battles were a man’s business, not a lady’s. Women were deemed to have a much more peace-oriented temperament and were thus suited to maternity and caring professions. Historian’s like Elizabeth de Cacqueray have pointed out the ironical paradox of World War One ‘according to which the nation had, on each occasion, a vital need for its women folk’s energy and competence whilst, at the same time, many members of society feared the consequences of women’s introduction into previously male dominated domains’.
To establish whether the First World War represented an irrevocable crisis of gender in the UK it is first necessary to determine the difference between gender and sex. Whilst a person’s sex is literally their biological make up and cannot be altered, gender attributes are much more a matter of subjectivity and are measured by the expression of femininity or masculinity. There is undeniable evidence of changing gender roles during World War One, for instance women undertaking manual labour and the development of maternal-esque relationships between soldiers on the battlefront. As the first war of its kind, where modern technology lent a sense of anonymity to proceedings and its sheer scale necessitated the mobilization of the
The act of war itself has, throughout history, come to be regarded as an engendering process, in some respects reinforcing and in others confusing the boundaries of gender definition. The First World War in particular represented a turning point in the discourse of gender within Britain. Previously, authority figures retained a seriously outdated perception of what it meant to be male or female. The government and military were the spheres most strongly associated with masculine traits. The idea that war served to turn boys into men was entrenched in the British public school system and in popular culture literature such as the writings of Rudyard Kipling. Battles were a man’s business, not a lady’s. Women were deemed to have a much more peace-oriented temperament and were thus suited to maternity and caring professions. Historian’s like Elizabeth de Cacqueray have pointed out the ironical paradox of World War One ‘according to which the nation had, on each occasion, a vital need for its women folk’s energy and competence whilst, at the same time, many members of society feared the consequences of women’s introduction into previously male dominated domains’.
To establish whether the First World War represented an irrevocable crisis of gender in the UK it is first necessary to determine the difference between gender and sex. Whilst a person’s sex is literally their biological make up and cannot be altered, gender attributes are much more a matter of subjectivity and are measured by the expression of femininity or masculinity. There is undeniable evidence of changing gender roles during World War One, for instance women undertaking manual labour and the development of maternal-esque relationships between soldiers on the battlefront. As the first war of its kind, where modern technology lent a sense of anonymity to proceedings and its sheer scale necessitated the mobilization of the
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