CONCLUSIONS
The gender system which had been so painstakingly constructed over the course of the nineteenth century was not ‘a casualty of war' but neither did it survive completely unscathed.73 Both governments and women themselves contributed to the destabilising of gender identities, the former as a consequence of the need to maintain the war effort and the latter as a response to the demands and freedoms experienced in wartime conditions.
Patterns of life were disrupted during the war years but traditional discourses on women's roles remained unquestioned and sometimes even were reinforced. So women were asked to make a significant contribution to the labour force but were castigated for spending their earnings freely. They were recruited as auxiliary servicewomen but criticised for wearing their patriotism. They were asked to be patriots but limits were placed on ways they might express their support for their nation. The sacrificial, silent, hardworking woman was far preferable to the independent-minded, sexually liberated woman who questioned her government or who exploited the conditions of wartime for her own pleasure or self-advancement. In these circumstances the gap between discourse and reality became unhinged for some women. The state never compromised on ways in which respectable femininity was configured, and yet it was unable to maintain a grip on women's changing sense of self. Whilst governments tried to discipline women's sexuality and became obsessed with morale they lost sight of changes in women's political consciousness fuelled by economic concerns. The temporary cessation of the feminist campaign for the vote concealed a more fundamental grassroots feminist consciousness emerging amongst many different groups of women and expressed in a variety of ways. Some used patriotism to escape the confines of a middle-class home and discover themselves as nurses or auxiliary servicewomen. Others, worn down by the dual burdens of work and family for four long years, resorted to direct action. A few expressed their feminism in pacifist activity.Women were not the victors of this war because they made few concrete gains as a direct result of the conflict. Rather we should see the Great War as a time when the values of the previous century were reaffirmed whilst women were anticipating a future in which they played a greater role in national political and economic life. One of the causes of this partial collapse of gender roles was the blurring of the borders between the home front and the battlefield. Separate spheres, which had been the guiding principle for relations between the sexes since the French Revolution, was subject to immense strain during this war, but whilst governments and many men struggled to hold the line against women's incursions into male terrain, they were unable to prevent women developing a sense of self which demanded the recognition of their rightful place within the body politic.