The First World War's Effects on Canadian Women

The First World War affected Canadian women because of the greater independence of Canadian women following the war. Once the First World War ended, Canada entered a period accurately named the ‘Roaring Twenties’. During this period, women began to act in ways that would have been unthinkable before the First World War. Many Canadian women had relished their newfound freedom during the war and did not want it to stop simply because the soldiers coming back from the war were taking back their old jobs. Some women continued to work and others went to college and university. Younger women, especially, went into overt rebellion against pre-established rules by becoming flappers. This involved cutting their hair short, wearing dresses and skirts that showed their arms and calves, smoking in public, and going out without a chaperone. Essentially, these women asserted their independence by doing things that had once been classified as only male behaviour. All this defied the Victorian social norms that had existed before the war. The First World War influenced Canadian women’s lives, even after the war was finished, by changing what was socially acceptable behaviour for women in Canada.