An Officer and a Lady by Cynthia Toman

During the Second World War, more than 4,000 civilian nurses enlisted as Nursing Sisters, a specially created all-female officers’ rank of the Canadian Armed Forces. Cynthia Toman analyzes how gender, war, and medical technology intersected to create a legitimate role for women in the masculine environment of the military and explores the incongruous expectations placed on military nurses as “officers and ladies.”