Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to contribute to this important study.
You have been fortunate to hear testimony from dozens of women veterans, who have courageously shared parts of their experience. As a military historian, I can only offer a simple summary of more than 20 years of research on the lives and experiences of women veterans in the two world wars.
Studying the historical context of these pioneering women's military service helps us understand the rest of the story. We quickly realize that the challenges these women dealt with in that era's social and military structures persisted for a long time, as did the barriers, pre-conceived notions, discrimination and prejudice they faced.
Until 1941, the only title a woman in the Canadian army could have was “nursing sister”. A total of 2,845 nursing sisters served in France, Belgium, England, Greece and Russia during World War I, 60 of whom died as a result of injury or disease. They were given a military rank corresponding to that of lieutenant, which gave them some authority over their patients in hospitals, but not over the men outside them. As you can imagine, that caused some confusion at times. As officers, however, they were forbidden to fraternize with soldiers outside hospitals. That was one way to protect their public morality. They were also required to wear a different uniform, including a long blue dress and white veil, which very much resembled a nun's habit of that era. These women were thus portrayed in the contemporary and media as white angels and universal mothers, and their behaviour was to reflect those stereotypes.
The rules required military nurses to be single at the time they enlisted. There were a few exceptions for married women and widows, but they had to have no dependents. Until 1943, those who got married were released from their duties. Until the 1970s, the Canadian Armed Forces viewed marriage and maternity as major problems and valid reasons for relieving women of their duties.
These pioneers wanted to serve their country in both world wars. I would like to say that there were always more women volunteering than there were available positions. The main reasons they gave for enlisting were that they wanted to serve their country and help win the war. These women had to struggle through a social, political and military system that considered their presence tolerable for the duration, but mostly unwanted.
Even during World War II, when over 50,000 Canadian women wore the uniform and served mostly in Canada, the army continued to describe their contribution as an emergency measure. They served in order to free up men so that they could do the fighting. As you know, women were barred from combat roles until the late 1980s. As a then-popular saying put it, these women were “the girls behind the boys behind the guns”. They were not employed because of their right or need to work, and which was often the case after the economic crisis of the 1930s. They were really employed because the situation was urgent, exceptional and temporary. This emphasis on their status as time-limited guests had a dramatic impact on the way they were treated as veterans after the war.
Veteran nurses, for example, were expected to rejoin the civilian health care system as soon as possible, whereas some of them hadn't done the same type of work for nearly four years. Women veterans who had served in other roles during World War II were expected to favour marriage as a career option. Steps were also taken to ensure they did not compete with men veterans, who were given priority for jobs.
In closing, this very brief summary shows that the social and military context in which Canadian woman's military service evolved, which, by the way, includes the hypermasculine warrior culture, marginalized women and minimized their more than 100‑year-long contribution to Canada's military history.
Thank you very much.