Gender and War
Australians at War in the Twentieth Century

This exciting 1995 collection of essays explores the inter-relationship of gender and war in Australia.

Joy Damousi (Edited by), Marilyn Lake (Edited by)

9780521457101, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 January 1995

362 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

War has been a key part of the Australian experience and central to many national mythologies. Yet more than most activities, war polarises femininity and masculinity. This exciting collection of essays explores the inter-relationship of gender and war in Australia for the first time. Traditional images of Australians during wartime show the 'digger' making history in battle, while women play a supportive role as nurses, or wives and mothers on the home front. Yet as this book shows, war offers opportunities that erode gender boundaries. Women may be empowered economically, politically and sexually, while the trauma of war can leave men emasculated. First published in 1995, Gender and War focuses on women's and men's experiences in WWI, WWII and the Vietnam War. This interdisciplinary collection addresses a wide range of subjects, and promises to change the way we think about women, men and war in the twentieth century.

Introduction: warfare, history and gender Marilyn Lake and Joy Damousi
Part I. Femininities: 1. Heroines and heroes: sexual mythology in Australia 1914–1918 Carmel Shute
2. Day mothers and night sisters: World War I nurses and sexuality Katie Holmes
3. Female desires: the meaning of World War II Marilyn Lake
4. Lesbians and loose women: female sexuality and the women's services during World War II Ruth Ford
5. Consuming passions: romance and consumerism during World War II Lyn Finch
6. Remembering romance: memory, gender and World War II Kate Darian-Smith
Part II. Masculinities: 7. A crisis of masculinity? Australian military manhood in the Great War Alistair Thomson
8. The gendered battlefield: sex and death in Gallipoli Rose Lucas
9. The gendered figuring of the dysfunctional serviceman in the discourses of military psychiatry Joseph Pugliese
10. In a cloud of lust: black GIs and sex in World War II Kay Saunders
11. Return home: war, masculinity and repatriation Stephen Garton
12. Comrades-in-arms: World War II and male homosexuality in Australia Garry Wotherspoon
13. A bit of the other: touring Vietnam Robin Gerster
Part III. Mobilisations: 14. 'All the passion of our womanhood': Margaret Thorp and the Battle of the Brisbane School of Arts Raymond Evans
15. Socialist women and gendered space: anti-conscription and anti-war campaigns 1914–1918 Joy Damousi
17. Feminists, food and the fair price: the cost-of-living demonstrations in Melbourne, August–September 1917 Judith Smart
18. 'Shut up, you bourgeois bitch': sexual identity and political action in the anti-Vietnam war movement Ann Curthoys
Contributors
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM]