Join the library for a talk about the impact of wartime on women and the outside forces that changed their lives quickly and drastically, but not always on a permanent basis.

The Great War (1914-1918) utilized the paid labor of women of all walks of life in the United States. Even though women served as an essential component of the labor force, they did not reap lasting benefits from having done so. Though the First World War accelerated trends in women’s employment that existed before the conflict, the nontraditional jobs that women held during the war were only temporary.

In this slide presentation and talk, Professor Greenwald will explain how modern wars affect women and how the changes they bring can often be conflicting ones in the long term.

Bio: Maurine Greenwald is an Associate Professor in the History Department of the University of Pittsburgh. Her main areas of study are modern American social history and U.S. working class history. She has written about the effects of war on women and the changing nature of their roles in American history.