Women's Revolutionary Role

The war accomplished what decades of feminist agitation had not: proving women's capabilities in every sphere. With 3.7 million men mobilized by 1914's end, women assumed responsibilities previously unthinkable. They became heads of households, farm managers, factory workers, tram drivers, bank clerks, and doctors. This transformation occurred not through ideology but necessity.

In rural France, women's burden was crushing. Marie-Louise Bouglé, farming near Chartres, wrote in her diary: "Dawn to midnight, I work. Plowing, sowing, harvesting—tasks I never imagined doing. My hands bleed, my back breaks, but the land must produce. France needs bread, my children need food. I have become both man and woman."

Urban women entered industry en masse. By 1917, 400,000 women worked in munitions factories alone. At the Citroën plant in Paris, women comprised 60% of workers producing artillery shells. They operated lathes, handled explosives, drove trucks. "Munitionettes," as they were called, earned better wages than prewar domestic service but faced dangerous conditions. TNT poisoning turned their skin yellow, earning them the nickname "canaries." Many developed liver disease, lung damage, fertility problems.

Middle-class women found new roles in administration and services. Banks, previously male preserves, employed women as clerks and even managers. The Paris Metro hired its first female ticket collectors in 1914; by 1918, women comprised half its workforce. Schools, hospitals, and government offices depended on female staff. Even the sacred masculine realm of higher education opened—the Sorbonne admitted record numbers of women students.

Professional breakthroughs occurred across fields. Marie Curie organized mobile X-ray units, driving to the front herself. Dr. Nicole Mangin became the first woman officially serving as a military doctor, though the army initially refused to acknowledge her status. Women lawyers pleaded cases, women journalists reported news, women architects designed worker housing.

Yet liberation came with exploitation. Women earned 50-75% of men's wages for identical work. Factory conditions were appalling—twelve-hour shifts, minimal safety equipment, sexual harassment from supervisors. Trade unions, initially hostile to female workers as wage-depressing competition, slowly recognized the need for solidarity. The 1917 strikes by Parisian seamstresses, demanding equal pay and shorter hours, marked a watershed in female labor organization.