The General’s Niece

Over the last year I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and reading about women involved in resistance movements in World War II. The extent of women’s particicpation in the armed resistance units known as the maquis is a matter of dispute. But no one doubts that many women performed critical activities that allowed the…

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You think one vote doesn’t matter? Hah!

We’re coming up on the hundredth anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment, Which made it legal for women in the United States to vote.* If you hang out in Historyland, you’re going to be reading a lot in the coming year about suffragettes (or, to use the term many of them preferred, suffragists**, the…

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Women of the Great War: Before Rosie the Riveter

A generation before Rosie the Riveter, munitionettes “wo-manned” Britain’s factories and mines, replacing the men who volunteered for General Kitchener’s New Army in 1914 and 1915. Women were initially greeted in the work force with hostility. Male trade unionists argued that the employment of women, who earned roughly half the salary of the men they…

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