Before Britain implemented mass conscription, they needed men to volunteer.  To help this along, Admiral Charles Fitgerald and noted anti-suffragist Mary August Ward co-founded the Order of the White Feather in August 1914.  The Order's aim was to convince men to enlist in the armed forces.  They would do this by having young women present a "gift" of a white feather to young men that were not wearing a uniform in public spaces.  The white feather was a symbol of cowardice in Britain, making this gift into an insult.  The hope of the organization was that, by publicly shaming young men with such an insult, more would be inspired to join the British Army and join the war.  Unfortunately, the Order proved to be rather unpopular with servicemen and public servants.  This was because they would frequently give their feathers to clerks at public offices, tourists, foreign students, wounded veterans, men found unfit for military service, and service men that were wearing civilian clothing while on leave.  Many reportedly did this even after they were informed who they were giving a feather to.

As the Great War dragged on, workplaces emptied and open positions went unfilled.  This was due in large part to the mass conscription of able-bodied young men.  In order to replenish losses, fresh bodies had to be thrown through the meat grinder.  Since most of these new recruits were not unemployed before they were inducted into the army, their jobs went undone.  Fields were not tilled or worked, trams and trains had no conductors, and factories saw their production numbers drop as their facilities emptied.  In order to combat this labor shortage, the Great Powers tried to encourage women to fill the jobs that were left empty.  The results of their initiatives were mixed.  In nations such as France and Britain, where women already worked outside the home in large numbers, these pushes bore fruit.  Over 400,000 new workers joined a depleted workforce in Britain, all women. Women found began working in factories and mines, as tram conductors, and in offices as clerks.  France did not see women's employment numbers increase in the waged work-force to such a high degree, but the agricultural sector did radically shift in gender makeup.  The total number of agricultural workers also technically increased during the war.  Three million male farmers and farmhands, were conscripted into military service over the course of the war.  However, they were replaced by 3,200,000 women, mostly wives and family members of the now-missing men. 

Germany, on the other hand, had a harder time convincing women to try and fill what were traditionally seen as men's jobs.  While some did fill open positions, such as the 14,000 street-car drivers employed in Germany, a good twenty percent or more were wives, sisters, and mothers taking over a husband or family member's position under the understanding that this arrangement was temporary.  They would only be working and earning wages until the 'breadwinner' was granted leave from military service or returned from the war.  Another obstacle was the home front legislation which was passed during the war.  While the Auxiliary Service Law required all men who were not actively serving to serve where there were labor shortages at the whim of the government, women were left out.  This was less due to women's protest and more due to the German government, and male-dominated labor groups, believing women had no place in the waged workforce.  Especially since they were often given a stipend to help cover the lost wages of their husbands or other providers.

While many women supported the war effort at home with their efforts, there were some that protested the war.  There were also more than a few that actively worked towards peace and an end to the Great War.  Enter, the Women's Peace Party.  In 1915, Jane Addams, an American suffragist and   the WPP took cues from earlier peace movements and women's organizations by organizing themselves around a platform of women as mothers or caretakers.  They argued that, due to having to directly nurture and care for children from infancy to adulthood, women knew the cost of a human life better than the men in control of nations and armies, and therefore were better suited by nature to ending and preventing wars.  In addition to general peace lobbying at home, a meeting of an International Congress of Women was planned for April of 1915.  The WPP invited over fifeen hundred delegates from twelve countries involved in the Great War to convene at The Hague in the Netherlands.  This group would then discuss possible terms of peace and prepare a document to present to the leaders of the armies and nations that they represented.  Unfortunately, this anti-war effort was seen as a threat to civilian and military morale, and a possible chance for the enemy to collude with citizens and sabotage the war effort.  There was also the general danger of international travel during a time when most of the major nations had borders bristling with guns and warships were prowling the most travelled waters.  The British government refused travel permits to 180 of the delegates, and French delegates were outright arrested by the government before they could get to the border.