“To Care for Him Who Shall Have Borne the Battle”: Ex-Servicewomen and Gendered Discourse, 1918-1929

Historians have long neglected ex-servicewomen’s contributions to the veterans’ welfare state. This trend has been exemplified by widespread inattention to the postwar struggles of thousands of primarily White women who served during World War I as nurses, clerical workers, telephone operators, and welfare workers. Although feminist scholars have begun to revise the narrative to reconsider the first World War with their military service at the forefront, there has been little attention to their struggles during demobilization and reconstruction in the interwar years. As a result, there has been no analysis of the subsequent emergence and activism of their veterans’ service organizations. Yet, these organizations struggled to claim entitlement to the equal rights associated with military service. Despite evidence of such efforts, their influence on the development of the modern veterans’ welfare state remains largely ignored. The present dissertation addresses this gap by focusing on the interwar activism of the Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) – a group initially led by primarily White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ex-servicewomen. It sought to identify the ways in which traditional discourses surrounding gender and citizenship influenced the context for the WOSL’s interwar activism, 1918-1929. A thematic analysis of purposively selected historical data items from physical and online sources revealed influences in four areas, which affected the organization’s initial decision to seek equal rights through formal channels; its failure to obtain them; its decision to seek alternative activist strategies and objectives; and its success at earning and maintaining equal rights through alternative means. These results are explained in the backdrop of policy feedback theory. Key findings, contributions, and limitations are discussed. This study concludes with recommendations for future social work research, education, policy, and practice.