First World War Centenary : Women at War

A woman officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) teaching male army recruits how to use their gas masks

WAAC recruiting sergeant and assistant talking to potential recruits in Trafalgar Square in London

New officer recruits to the WRNS, wearing a mix of civilian dress and uniform, undergo drill at Crystal Palace

A member of the VAD starts up the engine of her ambulance at Etaples, France, 27 June 1917

Munitions workers use primitive remote handling equipment to work with TNT explosives at Woolwich Arsenal

An ambulance driver examines her vehicle’s engine before departure.

Two women workers cover Army tropical helmets for the firm of Messrs E Day in St Albans

Members of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) working in a British Army bakery at Dieppe on 10 February 1918.

A member of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps holds up two loaves of bread she has made at the British Army bakery at Dieppe, France, on 10 February 1918.

Women police patrols giving information to men on leave at a London railway terminus.

Two members of the Women's Police Service comparing notes with a male Police Constable at Euston Station, London.

A portrait of a woman at work as she canters studded tread on tyres at the Charles Mackintosh rubber factory in Manchester.

A member of the Women's Land Army operating a single-furrow plough on a British farm during the First World War. 

An officer of the Womens Royal Naval Service (WRNS) supervising the wiring together of glass floats on an anti-submarine mine net during the First World War.

Women in France plouging hardcore, 1917.

Three female refugees whose husbands were killed

A Dutch woman distributing gifts to returning British prisoners

As soon as war broke out women began to take on roles previously reserved for men, from law enforcement to the civil service and from the post office to farm labouring.

The suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, is arrested outside Buckingham Palace in May 1914, a matter of months before the outbreak of hostilities. Admiration for womens' war work was a useful factor in accelerating the struggle and bringing about the Representation of the People's Bill in 1917. Full voting equality wasn't achieved until 1928, however.

There were anti-German riots in Britain from the start of the war, only heightened by events such as the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Given that many of them would already have lost husbands, sons and brothers at the front, the enthusiastic participation of some women wasn't surprising.

Rose Cohn, journalist Dorothy Day and Charlotte Margolies wearing sashes stating "Keep Out of War" in protest against the US joining the war.

German women working as window washers in Berlin.

A German woman making Iron Cross medals awarded to soldiers for gallantry.

A woman munitions worker welds at a work bench in an armaments factory, 1915. 

Women munitions workers in Paris, 1916. 

Female WWI war workers mix chemicals in a munitions plant abril de 1917

British women employed as porters re shortage of men during World War I.1915

Members of the Women’s Fire Brigade with their Chief Officer, March 1916.

Women police appointed for duty at a munitions works trying on new boots. United Kingdom, 30th January 1917. 

Young women from Lowell in Massachusetts team up to form America’s first Women’s Death Battalion during World War I, inspired by their Russian counterparts, circa 1917.

Polish women working for the relief of refugees

Members of the Russian women's "Battalion of Death" training in Petrograd.

A despatch rider in the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) enjoying a tea break while seated on her Phelon & Moore 500cc single cylinder motorcycle circa 1918.

A mother carries her sick son through Belgrade, Serbia, hoping to find him some aid. Her daughter walks beside them. They are war refugees left homeless by World War I.

An old woman picks lice or bugs from the scalp of a young boy. Their family are refugees from the fighting of World War I. Serbia, December 1918. | Location: Leskovac, Serbia.

The women nurse and volunteer workers have been found to be practically indispensable in alleviating the sufferings of the wounded and mitigating the evils of the battlefield. It is the women who are the real heroes of the war. Braving death in the trenches from the bullets of the enemy, these heroic women continue their work from early morn to late night, inspired only by the good they are accomplishing. The photograph shows some of these self-sacrificing First Aid Nurses of the British Yeomanry Corps at work in the trenches. They are placing a wounded soldier on the stretcher.

A nurse checks the temperature of a soldier in a military hospital. abril de 1918

Nurse Chats to Blind Soldiers ca. 1915

An American Red Cross nur se serves a hot meal to wounded soldiers abril 1918

Belgian Refugees Passing Through Northern France.1914

English Nurses in a French Hospital

Women's Reserve Ambulance Unit Leave London.1916

WRAF air mechanics working on the fuselage of an Avro 504

Three members of the British Women's Royal Air Force maintaining a military biplane in June 1918 during World War I.

Members of the Women's Royal Air Force Celebrate End of First World War

Woman Munition Worker During Great War.

Women workers at Vickers Ltd. making shells ca. 1915

This German woman and her baby were some of thousands expelled by Poland after the war.

Group of women working on an automobile engine re shortage of men during World War I. United Kingdom 1916

Austria-Hungarian soldiers executing Serbian women

English nurses tending to wounded soldiers close to the front.

Serbian women driven from their homes by German forces

Women workers were called on and trained to perform non conventional jobs during World War One.

A portrait of a woman war worker as she drives her trolley around the factory floor at Chillwell shell-filling factory in Nottinghamshire. She is wearing overalls and a cap.

Women war workers stencil shells at the National Filling Factory, Chilwell. On the right hand side, two women each push a sack barrow carrying a shell towards the camera.

Men and women use wooden mallets to secure the tops of shells in the 'Melting House' of the National Filling Factory, Chilwell.

WRNS officer recruits undergoing rifle instruction at Crystal Palace, London, during the First World War.

A WRNS officer recruit undergoing rifle instruction at Crystal Palace, London, during the First World War.

Interior of a ward on a British Ambulance Train in FranceInterior of an ambulance-train ward, France, during World War I. This image is very striking due to the lighting and the tunnel effect of the train carriage, which is emphasised by the parallel lines of the wooden panelling on the roof. Two nurses are busy tending the wounded while two officers survey the scene from the top of the carriage. Ambulance trains were used in the main to transport large groups of soldiers to the French coast so that they could return to England, normally through Dover, for treatment and recuperation.

A FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) with male helper carrying out repairs to an ambulance at St Omer, France

A female worker assists with the alignment of a ship's propeller on Tyneside, England

A female worker lies inside the barrel of a naval gun to clean the rifling at the Ordnance Works, Coventry, England

A points-woman uses her right arm to signal to an oncoming engine from her position beside the tracks

A woman drives a trolley train across a busy factory floor at the National Filling Factory, Chilwell, Nottingham

A woman fitter working on an aeroplane propeller at Frederick Tibbenham Ltd in Ipswich, England

A woman operator in a signal box on a siding at the Great Central Railway in Birmingham, England

A woman war worker fixes nose clips on to gas masks at a factory in Bermondsey, London, England

The Duchess of Sutherland with wounded soldiers at her hospital at Calais in 1917

Cemeteries on the Western Front During the FIrst World War. Members of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs) tending the graves of fallen British soldiers in a cemetery at Abbeville,1918 France

Female bricklayers at work on a building site in Lancashire, England

Five drivers of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) in their issued fur coats at Calais, France

Head and shoulders portrait of a cheerful Canadian nurse

Nurses on a British ambulance train near Doullens with their pet canaries.The canaries were kept not only to cheer the wounded but also to give warning of gas attacks.

Sergeant Major Flora Sandes who had seen active service and a Serbian officer, Salonika, Greece

Two young women operate machinery in the works of Armstrong Whitworth’s and Co

VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) fitters at work on a car at Etaples

Woman trolley driver at Liverpool Street Station, London

Women driver and conductor on board their tram, somewhere in Scotland

Women workers salvaging bricks from a bomb damaged area

Women's Auxiliary Army Corps tending the graves of the fallen in France

Women's Auxiliary Army Corps: Two WAACs tending fat boilers situated out of doors in an infantry camp at Rouen

Members of the Women's Fire Brigade on a fire drill with hoses and extingushers at full force, March 1916.

Occupied France. An encounter between French civilians and a German guard in occupied France. Ten percent of eastern France remained in the possession of the German Army for the war's duration. During the occupation, many thousands of civilians, including teenage girls and boys, were taken away for forced labor. Everything of value, including the contents of shops and factories, household goods and personal possessions, and even church bells, was confiscated and removed to Germany. Local foodstuffs and livestock were seized and fed to the occupying army, causing civilian malnutrition.

Suffering of Armenians: An Armenian woman kneels beside a dead child lying in a field in Syria. The Armenians had been forcibly uprooted from their homes and marched south toward the Syrian Desert by the Turks.

1918 A French woman kneels upon bringing flowers to a soldier's grave site.

Three women brick workers pose for the camera with their shovels and their wheeled skip for conveying clay from the mills for silica brickmaking, somewhere in South Wales.

A member of the Women Porters At Marylebone Station Group giving a Great Central Railways carriage a thorough clean, 1914.

Many women found work in munitions factories during the war leaving some propagandists the task of trying to reconcile this direct contribution to the slaughter on the front with the so-called traditional feminine role of 'life-giver'.

One woman writing for the magazine of a projectile factory she was working in said: "the fact that I am using my life's energy to destroy human souls gets on my nerves". She was proud that she was "doing what I can to bring this horrible affair to an end. But once the war is over, never in creation will I do the same thing again".

Women 'Crane girls' at work at the National Filling Factory, Chilwell

Women at Work During the First World War: Munitions Production, Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, England, UK, 1917

German women employed in a german munitions factory

Women war workers gauge the thickness of the heads of shells at Woolwich Arsenal

Two women war workers push a truck load of shells at Woolwich

Women war workers fill machine gun belts at the Inspection Building, Park Royal, London

Women war workers making gas masks

Women war workers operate an annealing machine at the Royal Arsenal Woolwich

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cast First World War Centenary : Women at War

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