For every fighter a woman worker Y.W.C.A : Back our second line of defense –a poster created by Ernest Hamlin Baker in 1918; intending to showcase and encourage women workers, during World War I.
In 1914 former president Woodrow Wilson was faced with a great challenge; World War 1. The First World War was an international conflict between Europe, Russia, the Middle East, the United States, and many other countries that resulted from long-simmering rivalries and ethnic conflicts.[1] Although Woodrow Wilson had decided that America would stay neutral, in 1915 when the British ship Lusitania sunk, 128 Americans died.[2] This prompted the immediate declaration of war. Having removed millions of people from the workforce to have them serve in the Army created a labor shortage, encouraging women to take jobs that had been predominantly held my men.[3] This is where the Young Women’s Christian Association, otherwise known as the YWCA, comes into play.
The Young Women’s Christian Association is an organization that started with the purpose of advocating for gender equality in the workforce. Initially founded in England, the first branches of the American YWCA were established in 1858 in Boston and New York.[4] During World War I, the Young Christian Women’s Association (YWCA) established programs to support women by providing them with training, housing, and advocacy.[5] As mentioned before, this came because of many men getting drafted to the war, and the market still needing workers to keep up with production. Within this association, members sought to provide housing, training, education, and moral guidance for working-class girls, who might otherwise be cast adrift in the growing urban and industrial centers of the United States.[6] When looking at this piece (https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.40823/) it is important to know that Ernest Hamlin Baker, the artist, wanted us to be able to see a vivid representation of the disposition and courage women had when it came to fighting for equality. Made in 1918, this photo/drawing comes to show us how despite there being an ongoing war, women were standing up for themselves and their families and showcasing it. If you look at the illustration, you might notice that every single one of the women shown is wearing a different type of uniform. This is to show how women were showing their support for the men that had gone to fight in war. Further proving that they were up to do any man’s job, no matter the circumstances. Moreover, the YWCA actively resisted the dominant racialized conceptions of immigrant assimilation. [7] While for most African American soldiers, serving in World War I boosted their social, political, and cultural horizons, this was not an opportunity that was given to everyone.[8] Therefore, the YWCA began a process of reform that enabled it to embrace racial justice as a central mission, rather than an awkward aside.[9] If you look closely at the illustration, you will notice that there is a trail of what looks like thousands of women marching all together. This area of the poster is the artists way of further showcasing just how big this movement was. A movement that strived to be as inclusive as possible, in a time where having interracial friendships and relationships was not the normality.[10] Against a public discourse that understood Americanization as a process of stripping old cultural and political affiliations and putting on a new, clean garb of Americanness, the Young Women’s Christian Association approach can be characterized as pluralist, pragmatic, and intimate.[11] Ernest Hamlin Baker used muted bright tones that go together to portray just how strong women stood during the early 20th century. Currently, women’s inequality and mistreatment remain ubiquitous features of both western and non-western cultures, reflecting the trans-historical and global persistence of patriarchal ideologies even as their manifestations in specific contexts reflect important differences. [12] After many decades the Young Women’s Christian Association is still up and running. As a matter of fact, their New York City office is currently being used to continue instilling the aforementioned values and morals into young women.
If you would like to learn more about what they do at the YWCA and the services they offer, please watch the video below.
[1] David E. Shi. America: A Narrative History. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019, 897.
[2] Ibid., 902.
[3] Ibid., 909.
[4] Helen Laville, “If the Time Is Not Ripe, Then It Is Your Job to Ripen the Time!” Women’s History Review 15 (3): 359-83.
[5] Ibid., 359.
[6] Ibid., 371.
[7] Zornitsa Keremidchieva, “From International to National Engagement and Back: The YWCA’s Communicative techniques of Americanization in the Aftermath of World War I,” Women’s History Review 26 (2): 280-95.
[8] Ibid., 285.
[9] Helen Laville, “If the Time Is Not Ripe, Then It Is Your Job to Ripen the Time!” Women’s History Review 15 (3): 359-83.
[10] Ibid., 378.
[11] Zornitsa Keremidchieva, “From International to National Engagement and Back: The YWCA’s Communicative techniques of Americanization in the Aftermath of World War I,” Women’s History Review 26 (2): 280-95.
[12] Anne Gerbensky-Kerber, Lynn Harter, and Erica Kirby, “Enacting and Disrupting the Single-Sex Mandate of the YWCA: A Post-structural Feminist Analysis of Separatism,” Women & Language 33 (1) 9-28.