Abstract

This paper provides a thorough knowledge about the role of women in the military. The role of women in the military began with the revolutionary war in which they helped the military by cooking, chopping firewood, building shelters and nursing wounded or ill men back to health. Then women took part in the war of 1812 and the Mexico-American war but they were not eligible for combat duties. During the Civil war, women again served in quasi-military status without benefit of rank or veterans' benefits.

They worked as nurses and helped in providing food. Some of the women also performed combat duties. During the Spanish-American war, for the first time in the Army's history, large numbers of women were hired to serve as contract nurses in military hospitals.

During World War I, first time the women were allowed to serve in the military on the non-nursing positions. Since then, the number of women in military is increasing. During the Gulf war 1991, women were not allowed to perform combat duties but since 1994, 90 % of the women have given assignments that involve combat duties.

Women in the Military

The Revolutionary War

During the American Revolution, the Army was a nearly all-male institution. Most soldiers were young, and more than a few were just boys. Officially, the Army was a racially exclusive institution. The majority of soldiers were white. However, despite the continued reliance on white males, mom than 5,000 black men fought in the Army or militia during the Revolutionary War.

Several hundred more served in the Navy. (Millis, 1957) The war's exigencies also caused a breach in the gender line. By war's end in 1783, more than 20,000 women had provided support, sustenance or active service for the military. Although not officially part of the military, women were vital contributors to its success. (Abrahamson, 1983) They helped hold the Army together.

The Army was the heart of the resistance and was crucial to the patriots' cause. Yet desertion was one of the greatest challenges troop Commander George Washington faced. Lengthy periods of deprivation, insufficient food and inadequate clothing and footwear were the most frequent causes of desertion. During the bleak winter at Valley Forge, desertions reached crisis proportions.

During a particularly dismal period, several large wagons filled with foodstuffs arrived. Ten women had braved the elements and poor roads to deliver tons of precious supplies to the beleaguered Army. (Fowler, 1995) Women helped stem the tide of desertions by cooking, chopping firewood, building shelters and nursing wounded or ill men back to health. Washington once remarked that: without the Army's women, many more men would have deserted. (Mahon, 1983)

For the women who accompanied the Army, life was difficult and dangerous. Little or no provision was made for them. They typically relied on their husband-soldiers for support. Sometimes they were allowed to ride in the baggage wagons, but few other concessions were granted them. (Hymowitz & Weissman, 1978)

Few women served directly as combatants. However, some did fight from necessity or choice. Some women did not wait for fate to provide an opportunity for combat. Many women disguised themselves as men in order to fight. The war presented its own special challenges for the women who remained at home. Local governments typically failed to provide fix the relief of soldiers' wives and children, which put the burden of maintaining the household exclusively on the women.

Circumstance forced some women to request their husbands' and sons' return. In 1778, one soldier's wife wrote, "[We are] without bread, & cannot get any, the Committee will not supply me, my children will starve, or if they win not, they will freeze, we have no wood, neither can we get any--Pray Come Home."(Cometti, 1947)

As the Revolution continued, the Army expended large quantities of gunpowder and small-areas cartridges. From 1779 to 1780, the commissary general hired men and women to make musket cartridges. Women combined domestic and munitions work by working at home, while men worked in the laboratories. The quality of the women's efforts was excellent, as their manual dexterity enabled them to make superior cartridges. (Risch, 1981)

Post-Revolutionary Period

After the war's end, many of the women had made were lost. They found few work opportunities existed outside the home. Cultural pressures continued to determine occupational roles. (Mintz & Kellogg, 1988) On the frontier, necessity continued to dismantle social distinctions between the sexes. Frontier women had to load muskets and fight with shot or club. Effective survival precluded the luxury of social constructs.

In November 1791, St. Clair left Fort Washington with 2,700 men accompanied by 200 women. St. Clair's army was mostly composed of inexperienced militiamen, many of whom fled when the Indians attacked. The remainder fought as best as they could, with the women fighting alongside. (Coffman, 1986) St. Clair's defeat stood as the worst disaster in American arms until the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. one--third of St. ClaWs force was killed or captured. All but a few of the women died in the fighting, or, if captured, were, like the men, tortured to death by their captors.

War of 1812

More than 527,000 men served in the militia during the War of 1812. The regular Army remained a tiny group of 6,700 men. Few women served with the military in any official capacity. As always, there were exceptions to this general rule. (Willenz, 1983) For some women, involvement in combat was not a matter of choice.

Seeking protection for themselves and their families, women were sometimes forced to seek shelter in Army forts. When forts were attacked, the women automatically became part of the defending garrison. In some cases when the fort fell, the women shared the fate of the soldiers--death or capture.

War-with Mexico

Women figured in the Mexican--American War early on. On 3 May 1846, after President James Polk sent troops into South Texas, the Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande, entered the disputed area and placed Fort Texas under siege. Captain Edgar Hawkins led the fort's defense. Women who had taken shelter at the fort provided essential support dining the siege.

For three days, they loaded muskets, put out fires and tended the wounded. When the siege was lifted, General Zachary Taylor made Sarah Borginis a brevet colonel for her singular participation in the defense of the fort.

Civil War

In a manner that paralleled past and future practices, the larger the scale and the longer the duration of a war, the more military leaders looked to women as a resource when manpower ran low. During the Civil War necessity again rather than equality created women's roles. Women again served in quasi-military status without benefit of rank or veterans' benefits.

Thousands of women (and even children) worked in government--owned arsenals and armories, helping to manufacture substantial amounts of munitions. To match the insatiable demand for munitions, work shifts often began at 6:30 a.m. and ended at 10:30 p.m., seven days a week. (Murray & Swantek, 1993) Between 1861 and 1865, more than 100,000 women became involved in wartime factory work.

Women also expanded their influence in medical support services and relief efforts. They served as nurses and organized efforts to provide food and clothing to soldiers. They also helped reduce the suffering of combatants and displaced refugees. Early in the war, more than 3,000 New York women provided medical support and nursing services for sick soldiers.

The Women's Central Association led to the establishment, in 1861, of the US Sanitary Commission. Under Superintendent Dorothea Dix's excellent leadership, the commission coordinated Union soldiers' care, staffed and supplied hospitals and organized transport for the wounded. The women received little monetary compensation. The Sanitary Commission's Field Relief Corps workers received $12 a month, for which they toiled day and night to relieve the agony and general discomfort of sick and wounded men. (Brocket, 1993)

The challenges Northern women faced were truly horrific, but Southern women lived through even more horrors. During the Civil War, some women completely broke with tradition, taking on combat roles. Madame Truchin, a Russian army officer's daughter, had been raised in military camps. At an early age, she developed an excellent knowledge of the profession of arms. Married to an American Army colonel, Truchin chose to remain with him when his troops marched to Tennessee.

Colonel Truchin was taken seriously ill, and during his convalescence, Madame Truchin assumed his responsibilities and served as the regiment's acting commander. The men obeyed her commands, and in the battles that followed, she sometimes led the men in attack. On the battlefield, her actions were reputedly courageous, even when she was subjected to the heaviest of enemy fire. After the Civil War, the Army rapidly demobilized. During the post-Civil War years, thousands of women joined their husband-soldiers, who were assigned constabulary duties in the trans-Mississippi West.

The government made no provision for either married or single women. Poorer women earned part of their living by mending uniforms or serving as washerwomen. Many women had only a soldier friend's or husband's support on which to rely. (Rickey, 1963) The husband--soldiers' fates were always in question when troops went into Indian territory. However, those left behind also faced fear and uncertainty. Some women were given pistols and instructed to shoot themselves and their children if attacking Indians overran the fort. (Rickey, 1963)

Despite the bonds resulting from shared hardship on army posts, the women (and men) were split by class. Officers' wives conducted themselves as Victorian ladies. Enlisted men's wives and other working-class women endured poor pay and low status. Interaction between the clasps was generally formal, reflecting distinct social ordering. Officers' wives often adopted their husbands' ranks, wielding them like a social pedigree. However, even for officers' wives, frontier life was harsh and dangerous.

Spanish-American War

By the late 1890s, women's efforts to improve their political status were gaining momentum. Suffrage associations were waging state campaigns. Utah and Wyoming had already enfranchised women, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union was attracting thousands of new members. (Echols, 1991)

In the military, as in larger civil society, women made incremental progress toward equality with men. Long-standing traditions that allowed women to enter the male world of the military only in times of dire crisis were changing. In 1897, the Missouri National Guard instituted a unique program that allowed women students of the state university to organize a company of coeds. A regular Army officer trained the company. One officer; Enoch Crowder; even allowed the women to perform close order drill without their corsets.

The Spanish-American War created a substantial need for military nurses. Early in the war, an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in Army camps. While combat claimed 365 lives, typhoid claimed thousands. As well as claiming soldiers' lives, typhoid caused a severe shortage of male nurses. Once again, necessity, overriding tradition, gave women the opportunity to support the military. (O’Toole, 1984) For the first time in the Army's history, large numbers of women were hired to serve as contract nurses in military hospitals. By September 1898, more than 1,100 women were working in wards overseas and in the United States.

Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee became the nurses' bureau chief. Despite the influx of nurses, the full benefit of this innovation was not felt until Army hospitals approached a state of collapse. (Cosmas, 1971) Once deployed, the nurses fell victim to the same conditions as the suffering men. Many contracted typhoid, and more than 12 nurses died.

Post-Spanish-American War Period

Largely as a result of the excellent service nurses provided during the Spanish-American War, Army and Navy leaders finally took steps to officially include women in the American military. Congress established the Army nurse corps, as an auxiliary, in 1901. The Navy followed the Army's example seven years later.

The impact was to make military nursing a virtual feminine monopoly for several decades.( Seeley et al, 1992) These initiatives validated the need for women in the military but still did not grant them full military status. Women nurses were without rank or equivalent pay scales. They also lacked military retirement rights and other benefits normally granted to male veterans.

World War I

World War I was the first war during which American women were officially allowed to serve in non-nursing positions. Driven by necessity and anticipating a shortfall in the numbers of young men available for active service, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels directed the recruitment of women for the position of yeoman.

Women were also allowed to perform clerical duties, which men had traditionally accomplished. This action had the dual effect of improving administrative support for the Navy and of freeing a sizable number of men for sea duty. The Marine Corps liked the idea and began its own program in 1918. However, the only women allowed to join the Army were nurses.

In 1918, Commander in Chief, American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. Pershing, cabled the US War Department requesting 1,500 nurses be sent to France at the earliest practicable date. Army personnel were experiencing a severe outbreak of influenza, and by October, nearly 70,000 soldiers bad developed a severe form of pneumonia. The death rate among the Americans rose to 32 percent of all reported casualties and accounted for 80 percent of deaths in some American combat units. (Pershing, 1931)

Opportunities and Risks for Women in Military

Women are serving in greater numbers and are also closer to the frontlines of combat than they have been in previous wars. Women were restricted from participating in direct combat in the first Gulf War in 1991. But since 1994, more than 90 percent of service positions, which includes most combat assignments, have been open to women. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there are about 140,000 women serving as officers and enlisted personnel in the U.S. military.

Women represent 16 percent of the enlisted population in the Army, 14 percent in the Navy, 19 percent in the Air Force and 6 percent in the Marines. Black women represent 41.7 percent of enlisted women in the Army -- the largest percentage of any other group. (Devilbiss, 1990)

The Army is a great place for women, [particularly] African American women, to serve their country. Regardless of its warts, the Army has done a Herculean job to ensure that people are advanced on merit, not gender or race. Since the American Revolution (1775-1783) women have served in the military in traditional roles as nurses and performing domestic duties, but also as spies. During the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, it is believed that some women disguised themselves as male soldiers to fight on the frontlines.

There is no documentation of Black women's military service in the Revolutionary War, but according to officials from the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, they may have served alongside Black men. Records do show that free Black women served during the Civil War as nurses, laundresses and cooks. Although they served in traditional roles, women found themselves in harm's way early on. (Karen, 1988)

During World War II, 88 nurses were held as POWs. There were also over 200 women killed by hostile fire in World War. According to Manning the Iraq war has been a victory for women. Thousands of women are over there and every one of them has gone above and beyond the call of duty -- they've done their jobs, they've done them as well as the men, and the three women who were in 507 Maintenance handled themselves very bravely. it is found disturbing that women, particularly mothers separated for long periods from their children, are serving at far greater risk. The fact that three of the women were captured...to one it is not a step forward for women it is a step backwards for civilization. (Elshtain, 1987)
For more than two centuries there have been many achievements for women in the military. many women still don't see how they fit into military history. It takes a while for them to realize what they did is important. It's a wonderful story of service, sacrifice and pride that is just now bubbling forth to the top.

Women and Combat Duties

The issue: whether women should be allowed to take up arms on the brutal front lines of combat. Opponents contend that allowing women into combat positions will undermine the readiness of forces, threaten national security, and tear at the nation's social fabric by officially condoning violence against women. Supporters counter that women who meet all of the qualifications for combat will simply enhance their units' readiness, as they have in other divisions of the military. And that success, they argue, will help enhance the societal view of women as leaders and fighters, instead of victims, in a culture where violence is prevalent. (Elshtain, 1988)

Gender Makeup of Services

Women now make up about 14 percent of the nation's 500,000 Army personnel. As fewer men enlist, the Army is banking on attracting more women to fill the gap. But many young recruits and career women say they enter with a disadvantage: They're excluded from ground combat service in the infantry, armor, and artillery branches, traditionally the paths top military leaders have taken as they move up the ranks. To defenders of the status quo, that exclusion is the last beachhead protecting the unique "warrior spirit" necessary to an effective, cohesive combat unit. (Forcey, 1991)

Women have proved that they can do what they want if chances are given. Their role in the military has changed from nursing to non-nursing and now they are performing combat duties. Time has come to realize their efforts and ambitions.

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