Women Soldiers in the American Civil War
Most films, photographs, or even literary descriptions of the wars that occurred in the United States or wars in which the United States has been involved, depict soldiers as male. Consequently, many people remain unaware of the military contributions of American women. The Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Washington, D.C. seeks to rectify this problem. Notably, the memorial is certainly not as famous as the Vietnam War Memorial or the Iwo Jima Marine Memorial. But the Women's Memorial relative anonymity is somewhat appropriate, as many women have dedicated their lives in relative anonymity in military service to the United States since the American revolutionary war in the eighteenth century.
During the last two centuries, more than 2 million women have served in this nation's wars. Many of them have served under conditions that demonstrated their status not just as second-class soldiers, but also as second-class citizens. For example, Frieda Mae Greene Hardin notes that when she joined the Navy in 1918, women still could not vote and were not entitled to military status or veteran's benefits. Today, two-hundred thousand women make up approximately 13 percent of the United States armed forces. Yet women remain ineligible for some military assignments, including all assignments for ground combat and submarines.
It took organizers 11 years and $22 million dollars to complete the women's war memorial. At the entrance to the memorial is a foundation that its architects describe as a celebration of the "collective strength of many individuals, rather than singular acts of heroism and bravery." Inside the memorials, organizers have inscribed quotations by and about military women on glass tablets and have included the names, photographs, service records, and personal statements of almost 250,000 women in the memorial's computer databases. The significance of the women's...