The Utilization of Women in Combat: An Historical and Social Analysis of Twentieth-Century Wartime and Peacetime Experience

In Russia, women fought in World War I individually under the tsar and in women's battalions under the provisional government. The role of women was expanded in the Civil War, with the Communists using 80,000 in various capacities, including combat. In World War II, their role expanded dramatically with more than 1 million women, most of them in uniform, and many in direct combat as snipers, riflewomen, machinegunners, tankers, pilots, and air force crew members. The ratio of combatant women to men in Communist-led Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) partisan forces in Yugoslavia during World War II was even higher than in Russia. Some Israeli women fought as combatants in the War of Independence. At the other pole, Germany, although it employed women as civilians in both world wars, did not take them into the armed forces or permit them any military status or combat role. The British utilized women on a small scale in World War I and on a grand scale in World War II in a variety of roles but denied them a combat or arms-carrying function. As an armed neutral, Sweden mobilized 150,000 women as noncombatant auxiliaries during the Second World War. Under postwar conditions the liberal-democratic countries-except for West Germany--gave greater latitude to women in the armed forces than did the Communist countries.