This chapter focuses on American women's voluntarism during World War I. It argues that in a political culture organized around voluntarism, Americans struggled to understand the difference between voluntary sacrifice and unpaid, or even forced, labor. Coercion operated differently in women's organizations than in the male vigilante societies that dominated headlines. Although women did not by and large experience or participate in physical violence, coercion still abounded.
Keywords: women, voluntarism, World War I, coercion, war effort,