ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, women's history has sought to discover women's place in history, to give women a voice, and to make them visible. This historicizing process implies two additional steps: studying the commonalities and complementarities in gender relations as well as differences at any given period, and their dependence upon cultural and social factors. Strangely enough, an old polarity of early women's studies has continued to guide the women's and gender history on the First World War that has appeared up until now. Woman's role in the family, household and workplace is contrasted to that of the soldier at the front line. The nurses and assistant nurses employed during the course of the war by the "Imperial Commissar and Military Inspector for Voluntary Nursing" represented about two-fifths of medical personnel, most of whom were male stretcher-bearers, orderlies and physicians. The organization dominating wartime medical care was the Red Cross, under whose banner the medical service stood.
