Women used Kana calligraphy to show their position as free-thinking, sexually-liberated intellectuals, within the constraints of 10th-century Japanese court life. They did this by publishing their literary works and openly using kana calligraphy to reflect their personalities in their diaries and the love letters they exchanged with noble men.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on Congress to amend the Selective Services Act to allow conscription of nurses, who were all women. His reasoning had nothing to do with equality under the law: The War Department estimated it needed 20,000 additional nurses to provide quality care to wounded soldiers. There were plenty of nurses in the civilian population to draw on, but the need was too great to wait for recruiting efforts to provide the necessary numbers.