'Women and children come first': From the Titanic to Today

Written by Emilia Meenakshi Emmrich
Edited by Zhifan Ye
Photo by Consuelo Kanaga (School Girl, St Croix, 1963)

“Women and children first!” sounds old-fashioned. It sounds like a cry you would hear on a ship sinking in 1912 as the lifeboats are loaded. It may not sound like a sentiment echoed by news outlets, films, and advertisements every day, yet here we are. In times of crisis, headlines are dominated by the disaster’s effects on “innocent women and children,” and the severity of conflict is usually emphasized by drawing attention to its toll on these groups. What does this phenomenon tell us about childhood, womanhood, crisis, and what happens when they meet?

One can’t deny that, a lot of the time, women and children experience threats to their safety differently from other demographics. Harm perpetuated against children is seen as particularly egregious due to childrens’ different sets of lived experiences and physical abilities. Meanwhile, the violence that women face through misogyny is only heightened during periods of armed conflict. Knowing these risks, would it not be conscientious, perhaps even feminist, to emphasize the protection of innocent women and children above all else?

It is true that women and children have long been up against structures that turn them into victims. However, it would be remiss to ignore that these same systems also cast women and children in the role of helpless victims to justify their domination. Despite the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘child’ are two distinct identities that intersect in a variety of ways, they are grouped into one demographic: the one of the innocent and defenseless. Traditionally, while men are seen as agents in times of crisis, women and children are portrayed as impassive and powerless, reducing the complex ways that these groups interact with conflict to a simplified and antiquated ideal of a nuclear family. So, women and children are trapped in a strange Catch-22. They are constantly associated with victimhood. At the same time, the perception of them solely as meek victims denies their potential and humanity, further reinforcing the biases that victimise them in the first place. Under the phrase “innocent women and children,” both groups are painted as needing male protection, ultimately domestic, and stripped of meaningful agency. 

The emphasis on women and children’s innocence is particularly disquieting since it adds a moralizing tone to descriptions of tragedy. It feels almost as if we need pure, flawless figures to empathize with the real victims of disaster. Due to the association of women and children with sweetness, they become ideal representatives. This process leads to a sad flattening of the intersecting effects that disasters have on all ages and genders into an easily digestible and welcomed narrative. Through this perspective, the more our own standards of virtue resonate with those affected, the more condamnation violence deserves. 

To disrupt this cycle, it is necessary to see women and children not as ragdolls tossed around by the whims of the patriarchy but as political subjects who take steps to subvert their own oppression. From natural disasters to resistance movements, women and youth take on roles of activists, builders, peacekeepers and freedom fighters, yet their contributions are undermined by well-meaning headlines emphasizing their passivity in the face of catastrophe. 

A lot of us at Havergal identify as women, and a lot of us are children. At the same time, most of us are lucky enough to be spared the realities of conflict and disaster. When looking at those who do, it can feel easy to categorize their sufferings and draw sweeping statements over their narratives to make the victims’ experiences more digestible to us, especially those of victims who are marginalised through age and gender.  The narrative of “women and children first!” has been around longer than most can remember. Now, we must tell stories that treat complex, marginalized groups not as tear-jerking symbols, but as people.