“Building A Great Organization for War”: The Associational State and Woman’s War Work in North Carolina, 1917–1919

Abstract

The entry of the United States into the First World War and the integration of women into mobilization expanded women-run private initiatives and integrated their associational efforts into the war effort. This created greater visibility of women and children to state and federal governments. In the end, however, the increased attention and mobilization of private organizations by the state around women’s issues was fleeting. The alacrity with which North Carolina dispensed with these mechanisms for mobilization is an example of their purpose as associational measures to manage the dynamics of wartime and maintain pre-war hierarchies of power. Throughout the war, the bifurcation of work based on gender and the unfixed status of women created a situation in which their participation required constant negotiation. The need to negotiate participation in the mobilization was itself an outgrowth of the conflicted relationship between American government and civil society over women’s issues. After the war, these issues again became the purview of private organizations and other systems of extra-governmental governance that leveraged a more associational relationship with federal and state governments.