Urban Resistance

Improved Essays
In her essay “partisanes and gender politics in Vichy France,” Paula Schwartz contends that while the number of women who saw combat as French resistors were rather limited, those who did “pushed gender barriers to their limits (151).” We see that the unique nature of the resistance as an unconventional force, meant that not women were able to participate extensively in the urban resistance and were in a lot cases given responsibility unheard of in a conventional fighting force.

Most of the female involvement in the war seems to have occurred in the urban areas, due to the masculine nature of the partisans in the countryside. It seems that while women were allowed to be involved in traditionally male affairs, they were still barred
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Even when the war was beginning to back down and the resistance was slowly turned into a conventional army, we see that the women are quickly put into combat support roles even in the cases where they wanted to be directly involved in the fighting but were rejected. At same time women, much like in the resistance, stretched gender roles significantly. They were not put in trivial position and were often filling men 's jobs as a means to free them up for combat, they possessed real worth and responsibility; a very progressive notion for a military at this point in history.

While women did push gender barriers in the resistance it seems like women in combat were an after though of the war, being overly emphasised in the post war memory, even though little evidence of this existent to any great extent. Women played an extensive non-combat role in the success of resistance and were seen as equal as men in a lot of cases which was uncommon at the time. However the emphasis on combat we see in the post war memory gives us a false impression of the role of women in the success of the resistance

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