Other absences were created by war work. Many young women left home for the first time to work in specialist compounds. The Canary girls of the munitions factory were situated on private compounds where they lived and worked with some significant side effects, like their skin turning yellow due to sulphur exposure, with deaths frequently happening around the factories.

The standard of living for families was largely affected by their location. The majority of the fighting took place on the European continent, in places like France, Belgium, and Germany. Those living on the front lines faced food shortages and violence every day.

In Germany, school children suffered malnutrition, anaemia, and tuberculosis. In France, an area the size of Wales was destroyed through trench warfare and 40,000 civilians died. Many families had to move out of their homes, and in some cases, entire towns were destroyed.

On the other hand, people who lived away from the fighting, like in England, had a much higher standard of living. British school children’s cleanliness, nutrition, and health increased despite the war. Children living outside of conflict zones were encouraged to forego sugar and collect excess wheat to be sent to the soldiers and refugees.

But this wasn’t the case in all countries. In India, high taxation to fund war efforts left many girls and their families struggling. The disruption of trade caused prices to rise, and many were left deeply in debt just to survive.

War also had its own effect on family life. Rising numbers of fathers signed up and shipped out to the trenches in Belgium, France and Germany.

Governments involved in the war used all the methods at their disposal to drum up national support for the war effort.

In Canada, many young girls helped to make bandages, collect books and newspaper, and baked goods for the soldiers.

In Australia, women volunteered with organizations like the Australian Red Cross and Australian Women’s National League. And in New Zealand, the Women’s Royal Air Force was created. Despite the distance, the home front still supported their soldiers with as much ferocity as if it were on their own front step.

The sense of loss and deprivation due to rationing, death and financial hardship were similar for children around the world.

Older siblings, mainly older sisters, were tasked with looking after younger siblings if their mother had to go out to work.  Many would continue to do so, or have to find work themselves, when fathers or brothers died in the war. This forced many to quit school early and to take on adult responsibilities while still children themselves.

By the end of the war, the world was faced with a generation of under-educated children.

Wartime propaganda was not limited to posters. Popular toys reflected the expected activities of a nation at war. Dolls were dressed as auxiliary nurses, working on the front, while guns and helmets let children act out wartime roles. Children used their imaginations to play soldier or nurse, sometimes with their own costumes.

While pre-war children dreamed of owning a German-made Steiff bear, the war made this impossible. British toy companies rushed to create patriotic British bears to satisfy the demand. Some of their favourite, but foreign-made, toys disappeared from shelves, replaced by items made locally. These were not always as successful as the toys they replaced, but both patriotism and the disruption of trade necessitated national toy production.

As the war progressed, many of the factories that produced toys in Britain were claimed by the Ministry of Defence and started to make uniforms, bombs, and bullets. The availability of new toys during the war decreased and children increasingly relied upon their imaginations and what they had already at home.

During WWI, publishers made their own contribution to the war effort.

A book entitled Hurray! A War Picture-Book was published and widely read in Germany, explaining the war and encouraging its young readers to actively support the war effort.

On the other side of the world, the New Zealand School Journal, first published in May 1907, offered readers feature sections on Gallipoli and the Western Front, in addition to reports on children’s fundraising efforts, patriotic poems and songs to sing together, moral fables and tales of heroism.

Children were encouraged to write poems, letters and draw pictures for those stationed in on the front lines. By reading letters written by children, we see that they had a strong grasp on what was going on in Europe and beyond. They were in touch with world events as loved ones often discussed these matters openly in front of children.

Local newspapers encouraged children to send in their work and published it in regular columns. In the Dudley Herald, a newspaper in England, Ethel Cole’s poem “My Daddy’s a Soldier” was published for its readers on the 13th of February 1915:

I don’t know much of fighting,
And I’ve never seen a sword
But Daddy’s gone and left us
And they say he’ll get reward.
But, oh me the house is lonely,
And poor Mother’s awful sad
She’s one pleasure, now, one only
And it’s me now we’ve lost Dad.
Dad they tell me is a soldier.
And he ought to go and fight;
And our neighbours say he’s plucky
And I’m sure he’s going right.
But oh dear, we do so miss him
And poor Mother sits and sighs
And I know she’s very troubled
By the tears in her eyes

-By Ethel Cole, 146 High Street, Dudley

Founded just four years before the war, the Girl Guides were popular among girls in the UK and US.

During the war, members of the Guides fulfilled important wartime tasks, such as carrying important messages and helping deliver milk. Guide activities started to include first aid and learning to send messages using small flags.

Guides would also raise donations for the war effort, coordinating the sending of care packages and organising their own knitting and sewing sessions.

They may have even been used by the British Security Service to pass secret messages during wartime, inspiring girls like 14-year-old Audrey Hepburn, who acted as a messenger for the Belgian resistance during World War II.

Sport became an important part of the school day, with government ministers wanting to prepare young people for active service.

Schools allocated extra time for sports.

Children spent some of their spare time playing football, hockey and other sports on parks and common land.

Due to the majority of fit young men being on the front, a large gap was created in sport and entertainment. Young female munitions workers were encouraged to play to keep their morale up, and quickly were used to keep the general population’s morale up by playing public sports.

The greatest goal scorer England had ever seen, Lily Par, began playing during WWI — and would score over 1,000 goals during her 31-year career. Sadly, in 1921, many football grounds banned women from playing.

School life continued as normal as possible.

Schools adopted a nationalistic, patriotic focus, with the expectation of all to support the nation’s troops included in lessons.

One commonly held belief during World War I was that if children undertook physical exercise this would lead to better school performance. Particularly, in New Zealand schools, there was a strong emphasis on outdoor life and sports. Children were taught out of doors as much as possible, with running, swimming and athletics a key part of their education.

During the war girls were taught sport at school. Many had a lesson called “drill”, the equivalent of today’s “Physical Education” lesson. These mainly consisted of marching on the spot, stretching and swinging large wooden clubs around as a strengthening exercise.

The work of female doctors, nurses, orderlies and ambulance drivers was essential to the war. Military nursing expanded across many nations and saw a wider participation by female doctors. At the start of the war, the British army was resolutely opposed to all female military nurses. Early volunteers from Britain were obliged to serve the French and the Belgian forces instead.

Until 1916 many of the nurses were unpaid, so they mostly came from wealthier families who could support them. These were powerful women who became quickly versed in the management of military hospitals. Women as far afield as Australia and New Zealand volunteered to go to anywhere that needed them, including makeshift hospitals on the front. In Southeastern Europe, many women served as medical staff, including Queen Marie of Romania, who trained as a nurse and set up various hospitals within Romania.

Due to their close proximity to the war, nurses and doctors were injured and killed while tending to the wounded and while travelling to and from sites. In Britain, 45 nurses were killed and over 200 were decorated for their services to the nation.

Women and girls joined the service as well. Over 100,000 British women became a part of the armed forces.

From 1917, the British and American armed forces allowed women to enlist, but only men were officially allowed to go into battle. Women were recruited to free up men occupying non-combat roles. The British army established the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF), who carried out support duties. Many of the women who enlisted in the U.S. undertook clerical work, and while French women were not given military status, they too contributed to military duties.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Maria Botchkareva, a 25-year-old peasant woman, formed a battalion of women. Over 2,000 women volunteered to form the ‘Battalion of Death’, fighting side-by-side with Russian men. Bochkareva was wounded and decorated several times.

In Serbia, Flora Sandes joined the Serbian army as a soldier in 1916. She was initially an ambulance driver on the Eastern Front. When she enlisted with the Serbians, she was allowed to serve on the front lines and, by 1916, was promoted to Sergeant Major. After the war, she stayed in the army and became a Major.

Women were also used as spies, particularly in countries that were occupied by military forces. Nurses and other women working on the front were also inadvertently involved in military operations, hiding troops during invasions and lying about information that they had gathered during their time with the soldiers.

The first British women to serve as police officers occurred during the World War I. These female officers patrolled public areas, such as railway stations, streets, parks and public houses.

One of their main responsibilities was to maintain discipline and monitor the behaviour of women around factories and hostels. They carried out inspections of women who worked in factories to ensure that they didn’t take anything into the factories which had the potential to cause explosions.

Women also began to work in the transport industry and were given positions such as bus conductress, ticket collector, porter, carriage cleaner or bus driver. The number of women working on the railways increased from 9,000 to 50,000 during the war.

After the war, many of these opportunities became closed to women as servicemen returned to their jobs. This was a common story for many professions after the end of the war.

WWI was a defining factor for the professional and social status of women engineers. Increasing numbers of women were working in munition factories as well as aeronautical and automobile engineering.

After 1915, a large number of women began to work in munitions manufacturing as the need for shells increased. By 1918, almost one million women were employed in some aspect of munitions work.

However, factory work was monotonous – women often found themselves doing jobs that had been simplified into a series of unskilled tasks. Working in munitions was relatively well paid, especially for women who had previously worked in domestic service. However, women workers in munitions factories were still paid as little as half the wages of men doing similar jobs.

Working in munitions factories often meant long hours and unpleasant or dangerous work. There were several devastating explosions in which women workers were killed. There was also little work/life balance. In order to keep up with the pace of demand from the front line, twelve-hour shifts were common and some women would work thirteen days in a row. However, the government did not provide a nursery provision for women working in other fields of work: this meant that they women had to rely on friends and family to help with their childcare.

After the war, the clock was turned back and women were dismissed from their jobs, instead expected to care for their injured male relatives or husbands. The war had upset traditional gender expectations. The reality of post-war society was more complex, with relatively few women accepting notions of social, sexual or political liberation.

Old ways began to reassert themselves as newly unemployed women were pressured into becoming domestic servants or to marrying. However, there were some positive outcomes. During the war, many women developed new skills, self-confidence and contacts as a result of their jobs. The status of women fundamentally changed and would continue to do so throughout the rest of the 20th century.

Women in many countries had been fighting for the right to vote before the start of the war. By the war’s end, only Finland, Norway, New Zealand, parts of Australia and a couple of American states had granted female suffrage. Between 1917 and 1920, women gained the vote in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, Russia, Scandinavia, Sweden and the United States. World War I changed patterns of work for women, broken down barriers between the home and the world outside, disrupted the class system, and offered women from across the globe new opportunities and experiences.