; ;

Doing Her Bit: a story about the woman’s land army of America

It tells the story of an often neglected bit of American history:  the role of women during WWI, who helped the farmers tend the fields when all the farm hands had gone off to fight.  It focuses on the tale of Helen Stevens, a New York college girl who wanted to do her bit, so she left the big city to join a camp in upstate New York that was training “farmerettes” to tend the jobs that needed doing.  Even after training to learn new skills, she and her friends still faced the prejudice of local farmers who didn’t think girls could do the same work as men.  They had to offer a day of work with no pay to show their worth, and still had to negotiate firmly, but prove their worth they did.