Women's Revolutionary Transformation

No group experienced more radical change than women. The war accomplished in four years what decades of feminist agitation had failed to achieve—demonstrating women's capabilities in every sphere. This transformation went beyond temporary role assumption; it fundamentally altered French conceptions of gender.

In factories, women proved capable of work considered impossible for "weaker sex." At the Schneider armaments works, women operated 50-ton hydraulic presses. In railway yards, they coupled freight cars and stoked locomotives. The notion of "women's work" became meaningless when national survival required every skill.

Professional breakthroughs multiplied. The Paris bar admitted women lawyers. Hospitals accepted women doctors in regular positions, not just auxiliary roles. Universities saw female enrollment triple. The École Centrale graduated its first woman engineer. Each breakthrough created precedents impossible to reverse completely.

Yet liberation came with exploitation. Women earned half men's wages for identical work. Sexual harassment was endemic—foremen demanded favors for better positions. Industrial accidents maimed thousands of women unused to dangerous machinery. Marie-Claire Pic, union organizer, wrote: "They call us heroines while paying us like children and working us like beasts."

Middle-class women experienced different transformations. Previously confined to domestic spheres, they managed businesses, supervised estates, made financial decisions. The war proved their competence in affairs previously deemed beyond feminine understanding. Marguerite Durand observed: "The war has done more for women's independence than all our speeches and demonstrations."

Rural women bore perhaps the heaviest burden. With men mobilized, they managed farms while maintaining households. Plowing, harvesting, and marketing fell to women who had never handled such responsibilities. Government propaganda celebrated these "Heroines of the soil," but provided little practical support. Infant mortality increased 30% in rural areas as overworked mothers struggled with impossible demands.