An ‘Army of Superfluous Women’: Australian single women and the First World War

When the First World War was declared, Olive King sensed an opportunity for adventure. After purchasing and converting an Alda truck into an ambulance, King entered into war service as an ambulance driver with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and, later, the Serbian Army. While King’s wartime episode might be regarded as an aberration, other independent-minded Australian women acknowledged the war’s potential to liberate them from sheltered lives of domesticity. Australian single women became prominent figures in overseas humanitarian ventures, managed communications and logistics networks, and excelled as medical specialists in challenging environments. Home front upheavals also affected single women in diverse ways as they actively offered their time and skills to essential services, publicly appealed for opposition to war and conscription, sustained the nation’s education institutions, and influenced public policy regarding home front morality. Yet only snippets of these women’s experiences have received scholarly attention within Australia’s broader First World War history. This thesis tells the story of the First World War through the lens of Australian women who were unmarried, separated or widowed prior to the war, and variously regarded as ‘superfluous’, ‘surplus’ or simply ‘problematic’ within Australian public discourse. Shining a light on the experiences of women less constrained by their marital or maternal status offers a more nuanced account of women’s experiences in war while adding to emerging literature acknowledging Australian women’s self-perceptions of their value and legitimate citizenship during the early twentieth century. Adopting a hybrid micro-biographical method, this study draws upon archival records, correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers to argue that Australian single women experienced war in unique ways as direct and active participants – transcending gendered expectations of their capabilities while also confronting resistant societal attitudes towards their prominent and self-assured wartime activism.