Thursday, March 12, 2009

Women in the U.S Military

The first time that women officially served in the U.S. army was during World War 1, but in that period they were not given full benefits an only non-combat positions. 
When the USA entered World War 2 the U.S military needed more people to fight for them so the Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall pushed for the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC).
The bill met a lot of opposition and outrage, but it was finally passed by the Congress on May 15, 1942, instituting the Women Auxiliary Army Corps. 
Though the WAAC, women could enter the military, they were only allowed to have non-combat positions, in particular as nurser and ambulance drivers, but also as radio operators, pilots and electricians.
Despite this amount of duty, women did not still given full U.S Army benefits.
This situation changed in July 1943, when after many women enlisted in the army, the WAAC was renamed to WAC, and women's auxiliary status was dropped: women finally received the same benefits as the men who joined the Army.
A big contribution to WAAC's programs was given by Ms. Oveta Culp Hobby, a Texan newspaper director and also first director of the Women Auxiliary Army Corps.
By publishing insertions on her newspaper, she called for volunteers to join WAAC, obtaining a big success: the first day she called for recruits, about 13.000 women responded positively.
Since that day, women divisions of the U.S. army have given a big contribution to the country: in 1978, the male and female forces were joint together and in 2001, about 200.000 women served in the army.
This is a very important story, because at first, is an important proof of how women supported and still support their country and at second, its very important how this struggle was recognized by the Government and helped women to have more freedom, also in defending their country.

12 comments:

  1. Good analysis of how important the integration of women into the military was. Also, good job describing the lead-up to their immersion and their receiving the same benefits.

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  2. it was a great idea to let woman work in the war because they helped out the military a lot with their jobs. yay.

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  3. This has good flow and it shows the progressive improvements in sequence. Easy to follow.

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  4. I think it's awesome how people finally realized that women could work in the military as well as men. Even though they generally only held non-combat positions, it is one step forwards for women's rights.

    You might want to do a final proofread before the final deadline.

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  5. Good sense of flow. It shows improvement of womans equality during the war.

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  6. Nicely done! It really shows how woman's status was portrayed during the war

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  7. Nice. I think that this is important to show how women helped in the military. I think this also helps with the general public's view towards women which helps towards equality.

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  8. A great article showing how women were first able to officially serve in the U.S. army to when they finally were able to serve jointly with male forces.

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  9. very nice job on showing the details about women in war.

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  10. It was a good idea to do away with stereotypes about women being incompetent and allowing them to contribute to the war efforts. Hats off to the women who lent a hand in pulling America out of the adverse conditions!

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  11. I'm happy to real a lot of good comments, this issue was really important. I hope there will be a day in with all the people will be able to have full right, without discrimination...

    PS: This second part is not a real comment, anyways, Bisrat, we need to put our names on the top of it, since we worked together (finally I understood how this blog works!).

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  12. I agree with Silvia. I think this is a really important issue and you made it easy to follow and interesting to read. Good job!

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