German Women, Industrial Society, and the Great War: On the Changing Gender Roles

Abstract

This article attempts to study the process of gender roles transformation of German women under the influence of World War I. Gender history as a social history of the sexes has significant heuristic potential which is why the author uses it as a methodological basis of the research. The recent years have seen an increased interest in war history, the front, and the rear from the gender point of view among researchers. The gender perspective — precisely because it has long remained outside the mainstream — has challenged and fundamentally changed the contemporary historiography of German history. Gender studies demonstrate that debates about war and peace are always also discussions of the gendered social order, or the ideas of “masculinity” and “femininity” at a certain time. For a long time, in historiography, the opinion prevailed that World War I was a decisive factor in the emancipation of women in Germany in the twentieth century. However, studies of the last two decades have convincingly shown that this thesis needs to be corrected at least. The increase in the share of female labour in German industry during the war years corresponded to the pre-war trend and did not exceed it in quantitative terms. Women’s labour in the industry was the lot of the lower classes. Measures of social support of the state for the families of military personnel, on the one hand, contributed to women’s financial independence, and, on the other hand, increased their dependence on it, formed dependents. The inability of the German authorities during the war years to provide for the basic life needs of the population led to widespread illegal activities (larceny, illegal markets) and protests, which together with the military defeat, became one of the main reasons for the November Revolution.