- This work traces the evolution of women's position as victims of war showing also how they have been increasingly incorporated into battle as actors and perpetrators. It documents women's experiences from World War I through to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Contents : Soldiers, saints, or sacrificial lambs? Women's relationship to combat and the fortification of the home front in the twentieth century / Nicole Ann Dombrowski -- pt. 1 1914-1939 -- Tortured and exalted by war: French Catholic women, 1914-1918 / Annette Becker -- The Great War and modern motherhood: la maternité and the bombing of Paris / Mindy Jane Roseman -- The enemy within: the problem of British women's sexuality during the First World War / Susan R. Grayzel -- Why we joined the revolution: voices of Chinese women soldiers / Helen Praeger Young -- pt. 2 1940-1945 -- Surviving the German invasion of France: women's stories of the exodus of 1940 / Nicole Ann Dombrowski -- The womanly face of war: Soviet women remember World War II / Barbara Alpern Engel -- A question of silence: the rape of German women by Soviet occupation soldiers / Atina Grossmann -- The lesbian threat: within the World War II Women's Army Corps / Leisa D. Meyer -- The silent significant minority: Japanese-American women, evacuation, and internment during World War II / Ivy D. Arai -- Turning women into weapons: Japan's women, the Battle of Saipan, and the "Nature of the Pacific War" / Haruko Taya Cook -- pt. 3 1946-present -- Gender, war, and the birth of states: Syrian and Lebanese women's mobilization during World War II / Elizabeth Thompson -- Silence, invisibility, and isolation: Mayan women's strategies for defense and survival in Guatemala / Antonella Fabri -- "It's right to fight": women insurgents in Peru / Carol Andreas -- Surfacing gender: reengraving crimes against women in humanitarian law / Rhonda Copelon.