The absence of the mobilized men had pushed the leaders of the countries in war to seek the contribution of the women to the patriotic effort.

But up to what point did this call involve a modification of the female condition?

The request of the factories of war accelerated certainly the arrival of the women on the job market (which was however not negligible in 1914), but this progress was not durable (this new employment were reallocated with male labor as of the end of the war), and they did not obtain a levelling treatment there on the wage level. There were strikes directed against this discrimination, in particular to France, in 1917, often dependant or confused with the protest against the expensive life. Lastly, the new female uses of industry were especially occupied by people who exerted already a trade.

In Germany and Great Britain, much of women left domesticity for the factory, which paid better. One saw also women of the middle-classes, in particular British, for which to have a working life up to that point meant to wane of its social status, to occupy of the civil service posts, of employees of the insurances and the banks.

But, for much of other women, the only task to hold a house and to raise children, in the absence of the husband and without financial support, in the economic context of 1914-1918, could appear crushing. The States were brought to recognize with the women of soldiers the right to a consideration and a particular help: they were, indeed, in charge of the young generation, which would have to take the changing of the hairy ones.

As the fear of the national demographic decline redoubled, the women were invited to regard their pregnancies as a patriotic duty. Propaganda natalist was intense during the war, combining the inciting one and the repressive one - the clandestine abortions increased, especially in Germany of 1918. The catch of load resulted in the payment of allowances to the wives of soldiers remaining with the hearth.

The impact of the war on the place of the women in the company is thus ambiguous: it supported more the recognition of their aptitudes than that their rights. But it gave them the conviction necessary to assert them: the movement of the “suffragettes” could thus lead in the United Kingdom of 1918.

The farming community forms the social group more sacrificed to the war. In France, one counted about 600' 000 killed peasants (1 death for 10 credits). For the peasants, contrary to certain urban social groups, the means of escaping the combatant service were quasi non-existent.

The daily existence of the families remained with the back was radically changed: as at the city, the women had to take new responsabilities and, for the heaviest work, the recourse to a complementary labor frequently was essential: immigrant, prisoners of war (Italian and Spanish in the south of France).

The economic transfers were not always favorable: thus, the campaigns were enriched overall by the rise by the farm prices, but, as from 1917 in Germany, they suffered from the roughness of the requisitions and controls. In any case, in front of the hecatomb with the armies, it is the resignation which prevailed.

The crossing of the war for urban environments in general and workmen in particular posed other problems. The recall with the back of the workmen, at the beginning of the conflict, had privileged the specialists, but, in Great Britain, the trade unions had to accept, in 1915, the policy of the “dilution” wanted by Lloyd George, i.e. the replacement of the specialists by other workers, less qualified but more.

The wage advantages that the French and German workmen could obtain, if they constituted a notable progress, proved to be insufficient to contain the rise in the cost of living, very significant as from 1916.

In Great Britain, great strikes of salary demands took place in 1915 (in the basin of Clyde and Wales) and, in spite of the consecutive aggravation of rationing to the underwater war in 1917, the standard of living of the working classes could be maintained slightly above that of 1914.

In France, working dissatisfaction vis-a-vis the expensive life burst in 1917: the strikes from March-June, launched apart from the control of CGT in Paris and in province, could however be stopped by the wage concessions of the government.

The situation, much more serious in Germany and Austria, did not cease being degraded as from the winter 1916: in spite of the substitute products, in spite of the soup kitchens and the canteens, the food shortage created a chronic state of malnutrition which strongly influenced the capacities of physical and moral resistance of the town population.

An indisputable index is the significant development of morbidity: vitamin deficiencies and anemias at the children, dysenteries, starveling typhus, overwork or exhaustion in the workers, for whom the research of food at the black-market mobilizes several hours per day.

Lassitude and aggravation in front of misery gave place, in the German cities, with a regular agitation, spring 1917 with the armistice: disobedience and desertions in the army and the fleet, strikes against the fall of the food intakes, which turn to the riot of the hunger to Leipzig in May 1917. These movements protesters were repressed but, exploited by the spartakists, they will support the organization of the factory workers. The fate of the families of civils servant, employees or small investors mobilized was not better.

Without having anything comparable with the misery which prevailed in the occupied departments, or with the abandonment in which certain prisoners of war were left, in particular the Russians in Austria, the increasingly heavy difficulties of the populations of the back constituted a capital element in the exit of the conflict.