Donna Gentile O'Donnell: Continuing the positive legacy of women in wartime

This week, the Thanksgiving news was dominated by President Bush's stealth trip to Iraq. More than a few political commentators wondered aloud if the midnight mission was an insurance policy against the airwaves being dominated by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she spent her Thanksgiving holiday with troops in Afghanistan.

For the record, I'm glad the president joined our troops for turkey and trimmings. Morale-builders, like the presence of the commander in chief, matter. And regardless of how one feels about the war, the strategy or the politics, these soldiers are Americans who are in harm's way. They deserve every show of support that we can muster.

The trip prompted broadcasters to do a look-back to other presidential visits during wartime... Eisenhower in Korea, Johnson in Vietnam. While watching those old clips run, there was one difference worth noting: the visibility of the presence of women on the front lines. In every old clip I saw, women soldiers were never seen. But they were fully visible in every Thanksgiving clip that rolled with Bush and Clinton.

Both President Bush and Senator Clinton were seen sitting next to, standing next to or shaking hands with women soldiers. Of course, we know that women have served across the wartime span. In the Civil War, Clara Barton, Dorothea Dix and many others redefined womanhood beyond the notions of socially acceptable, benevolent behavior, regarded then as the "woman's sphere." In World War I, 33,000 women served. Some historians assert that the noble, voluntary service of these World War I women soldiers was the principal driver for the passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.

During World War II, almost 500,000 women served, many of them nurses. And the nurses who served on the front lines faced, head on, what it meant to be a woman soldier in a man's army. In her recent book We Band of Angels, Elizabeth Norman details the extraordinary lives and heroic service of POW nurses imprisoned in the Bataan peninsula.

War has, historically, served as a significant pivot point in defining our view of women's roles, and in earlier days, women's rights. In the aftermath of each of the major wars, the traditional roles of women, "unfrozen" in the context of war, were, by necessity, reconsidered and subsequently reshaped. Following the American Revolution, Mrs. Adams was known to have written to her husband, reminding him to "remember the ladies." After the Civil War, many of the heroines of the war used the political capital they accumulated to press on the issue of suffrage. An ever-present symbol of World War II, "Rosie the Riveter," became embedded in the American psyche. Implicit in the message of her strength, patriotism and accomplishment in time of war was the undercurrent of "why not have her accomplishments in times of peace?"

In the years that followed the Vietnam War, a whole new generation of women activists picked up the gauntlet thrown down by its mother-predecessors, and pressed on for more of everything. Grassroots organizations pushed for state, local and federal legislation to protect a whole array of women's rights, political power in elected and appointed office was sought and achieved and the standing to pursue opportunities, regardless of gender, became part of the fabric of the workplace.

The consistent theme emerging from the presence of women in war is that women's opportunities for more advantaged political and social positions grew out of the travails of these conflicts. Like the Southern women who rioted against the Confederacy's food distribution program declared, "necessity has no law, and poverty is the mother of invention." The poverty of the social and political constructs, which limited the role of women, could not withstand, over time, what women found within themselves: full personhood.

Even today, these notions are finding tangible expression. President Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is barreling down misplaced ideas about the role of black women in international foreign policy. It was Rice who accompanied Bush on the stealth mission to Iraq. It is Rice who is part of the innermost circle of the Bush administration, and who made the rounds on the talk shows as the face of the mission after its successful completion. As the first black woman in this visible, critically important role, is there any question that she would demand gravitas as a presidential candidate in a future election?

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright took the international diplomatic community by storm when she used the term "cojones" to castigate an act of international aggression. The first woman to hold this important post, Albright redefined aggressive feminism. During her tenure, Albright led the administration's efforts with a take-no-prisoners attitude in her dealings with Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and in the ever-present Arab-Israeli conflict. In Madeline Albright, President Clinton found a woman of steely resolve, who remained undaunted in the face of multiple international crises.

These women -- Rice, Albright and so many others -- stand on the shoulders of their noble-serving predecessors. The "mothers of invention" live on, reincarnating from one generation to the next, meeting the challenges and capitalizing on the emerging opportunities born from the labors of war.Donna Gentile O'Donnell is finishing her Ph.D. in health policy history at the School of Nursing. She is from Philadelphia, Pa.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.