Women in Combat: The World War II Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union

Campbell, D’Ann

doi:10.2307/2944060

Cited by 48 publications

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“…Recollections of former male insurgents testify that there were quite a few women among them (Antonova). 15 The idea of women taking up arms faced strong resistance from public opinion in major belligerent states during World War II (except in the USSR), resulting in women not being allowed to use weapons (Campbell 1993). Apparently, this was not the case among the Ukrainian insurgents.…”

Section: Women In Camps and Military Units: Femininity Curtailed And mentioning

confidence: 97%

National Femininity Used and Contested: Women’s Participation in the Nationalist Underground in Western Ukraine during the 1940s-50s

Kis

2015

EWJUS

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Abstract:In the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of Ukrainian women joined the underground nationalist movement on west Ukrainian lands as members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). However, their experiences and contributions to this movement remain understudied, marginalized and trivialized in historical research. A study of personal testimonies of former female insurgents allows one to question the established perception that women served only in auxiliary and secondary roles in the nationalist organizations. This paper examines whether the concept of normative femininity-as constructed by the nationalist ideology-actually corresponded to the women's real life experiences in the underground. It explores the variety of ways in which a traditional notion of femininity was maintained, broadened, negotiated, contested and transgressed through women's active involvement in guerrilla war.

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Section: Women In Camps and Military Units: Femininity Curtailed And mentioning

confidence: 97%

National Femininity Used and Contested: Women’s Participation in the Nationalist Underground in Western Ukraine during the 1940s-50s

Kis

2015

EWJUS

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“…As the ‘invisible combatants’ (Campbell :301) of World War II, women filled new roles at home, as is well‐remembered through Rosie the Riveter. Female European soldiers were performing well in the field, though they were mostly in protected antiaircraft units immune from being captured as prisoners of war.…”

Section: Women and The World Warsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, 125,000 women were drafted into specific roles in antiaircraft units in Great Britain, and an additional 430,000 women volunteered between 1941 and 1944 (Campbell :306). During one of the first battlefield moments of women in antiaircraft units, British General Frederick Pile stated, ‘Beyond a tendency to chatter when there was a lull, [the women] behaved like a veteran party, and shot an enemy plane into the sea’ (quoted in ibid.:307).…”

Section: Women and The World Warsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting the Motherland: Women's Agency in Transforming National Identity

Sztein

2017

Studies Ethnicity & National

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The nation is most often imagined as a woman, and in fact born of a woman, whereas the state is almost always male. In Latin, 'nation' is a feminine word, while 'state' is masculine. The nation is wild, apolitical, and primitive. The state is organized and cultivatedwithin the limits of reason and law. This feminization has created representations of the nation as one 'under threat and sexual danger, and construes invasion or colonization as male heterosexual rape', as in 'the rape of Kuwait'a male hero and female victim (Pettman 1998:157). Furthermore, all agency is in the hands of the masculine state: 'women are the symbol of the nation, men its agents' (McClintock 1993:1). Men must protect the women, children, home, and land -'the motherland'.There are vastly different ideas of how men and women sacrifice for the country: men march into battle with agency and patriotism, while the woman 'woefully, but willingly, offers up her children (sons) to battle' (Nagel and Feitz 2007:39). During war, women 'become the guardians of cradles and coffins' (Afshar 2003:183), while their husbands, brothers, and fathers perish protecting them from the enemy, or the 'other' by race, religion, or ideology. Women are used as the moral justification for entering into conflict, and are 'sources of emotional, physical, and sexual comfort for men at war' (Nagel and Feitz 2007:39), who are undertaking the true task of protecting the motherland. The space that women occupy in this system is to populate the nation and teach nationalist identities and roles to the children.The spatial boundaries created within the gendered idea of states and nations have permeated society for millennia. 'Women are forever caught between the symbolic uses different national projects make of them, and the ways in which * Amanda Sztein is a second-year M.A. candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) focusing on Latin American Studies, international finance, and emerging markets. She has previously worked for the World Bank, the Cefeidas Group in Buenos Aires, and Theater Delta, an interactive theatre company that seeks to create social change via improvisational and participatory performances. Prior to SAIS, Amanda earned a B.A. in Economics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she completed capstone projects on mega-sport events and human rights. Upon graduation from SAIS, she plans to pursue a career in international relations.

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“…This paper will focus primarily on those British and Soviet organizations that were considered paramilitary. According to the definition from Merriam-Webster's dictionary, paramilitary organizations "formed on a military pattern especially as a potential auxiliary military force" 4 . Here we use the term paramilitary in its narrower sense to denote "forces formed by a government" 5 .…”

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confidence: 99%

The Soviet and British Governments’ Policies Concerning Participation of Women in Paramilitary Organizations of the Interwar Period

Залєток¹

2022

UHJ

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The aim of this article is to compare the policies of the British and Soviet governments regarding the participation of women in paramilitary organizations of the interwar period. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism and consistency. Both general scientific (analysis and synthesis, abstraction, system analysis, generalization) and special-historical (critical analysis of sources, retrospective, historical-comparative) methods, as well as the gender approach were used. The scientific novelty. The article compares for the first time the peculiarities of the participation of Soviet and British women in paramilitary organizations of the interwar period in the context of state policy in this area. Conclusions. The author concludes that the approaches of the authorities to the involvement of British and Soviet women in paramilitary organizations differed significantly and directly depended on the foreign policies of these countries. In the USSR, which despite its pacifist statements during the interwar period gradually prepared for war, its government in the 1920s began to take specific steps for organization of military training of its population without any distinction based on sex. In Great Britain, against the background of economic crisis and peculiarities of foreign policy, women have long been out of such training. In addition, both countries significantly differed in the patterns of behaviour of women imposed by their governments and societies. In particular, in the British public discourse, women were represented as a noncombat, auxiliary force during the future war, the femininity of members of women's paramilitary organizations was emphasized. Instead, the imposed pattern of women's behaviour in the Soviet Union was the opposite. They were strongly encouraged to follow the male example; the possibility of their participation in the war as soldiers was often emphasized. At the same time, they shared common arguments in campaigning for women to join paramilitary organizations and held public events to promote such organizations.

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Women in Combat: The World War II Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union

Cited by 48 publications

References 0 publications

National Femininity Used and Contested: Women’s Participation in the Nationalist Underground in Western Ukraine during the 1940s-50s

National Femininity Used and Contested: Women’s Participation in the Nationalist Underground in Western Ukraine during the 1940s-50s

Protecting the Motherland: Women's Agency in Transforming National Identity

The Soviet and British Governments’ Policies Concerning Participation of Women in Paramilitary Organizations of the Interwar Period

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