Opportunities to engage: The Red Cross and Australian women's global war work

During the First World War Australian women were attracted to voluntary organisations such as the Red Cross, a transnational humanitarian organisation that focused on the sick and wounded in battle as well as civilians displaced by war. Red Cross work provided patriotic Australian women with meaningful wartime activities that not only gave them a purpose but importantly became an antidote against the rising anxieties of war. This chapter reflects on the fluidity of boundaries and borders of war as it affected a range of womens experiences in the paid and voluntary domain. It features women who worked on the home front and those who found ways to travel to the war, to actively participate, to use their skills and expertise in creative and sometimes unorthodox ways. Through organisations like the Red Cross, Australian women created an imperial community, not imagined but very real, that offered them a space to feel fully involved in the war effort, actively and effectively. The chapter also suggests that exploring questions of self-identity and gender can help further broaden our understanding of Australian experiences of war.