USING “ROSIE THE RIVETER” TO PROPEL WOMEN INTO THE WORKFORCE
WORLD WAR II WAS A WATERSHED EVENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF the American woman. The demands that the international conflict made on the people of the United States offered women opportunities for new and expanded roles, profoundly changing the traditional social order. Ten million working-age men donning military uniforms created a severe labor shortage in the private sector and, in particular, in the rapidly expanding defense industries. Faced with a critical need for manpower, the nation turned to womanpower.
Women heeded the call. As millions of them entered the labor force for the first time, the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter—young and beautiful, strong and confident—aptly symbolized the phenomenon for the American public. Many women worked in industrial jobs directly related to the wartime buildup, laboring in airplane plants, shipyards, and munitions depots. Others worked in offices both inside and outside the government, serving most often as typists, secretaries, and personnel managers. Still others wore military uniforms, joining the branches of the army and navy created for women, frequently as nurses. This surge in wartime employment radically altered the face—not to mention the shape—of the nation’s workforce. In 1940, 12 million American women worked outside the home; four years later, that number had jumped to 19 million—an increase of a staggering 58 percent.1
Such a sea change, like so many other events in American history, was aided by the Fourth Estate. Newspapers, news magazines, and radio stations gave working women unprecedented quantities of positive coverage during the early 1940s. In concert with the government’s intense effort to persuade women to join the workforce, American journalism became a willing venue for what proved to be highly successful propaganda. News organizations prodded, coaxed, and cajoled the public into supporting the concept of women working outside the home—an idea that middle-class America previously had refused to embrace. Journalistic outlets abandoned all traces of their traditional adversarial role vis-à-vis the government and reminded women that their brothers, husbands, and sons were in danger of dying because they lacked the wartime goods that women could supply.
Although the primary motivation for news organizations nudging women into the workforce was to support the government and the war effort, the campaign ultimately had other beneficiaries as well. The flood of positive images of working women prompted nonworking women to expand their vision of what life could offer. This caused millions of women to consider striving to find fulfillment not in cleaning toilet bowls or ironing their husbands’ shirts but in operating a fifteen-ton crane or readying a machine gun for the field.
Some scholars question the long-term impact of women joining the workforce during World War II, pointing out that many of them were forced to give up their jobs when the soldiers came home. But there’s no question that the phenomenon altered the consciousness of a generation of women as well as the expectations of their daughters. Rosie the Riveter herself gained a new level of confidence because she learned not only that she could fill GI Joe’s shoes but also that doing so made her feel good about herself and her new place in society. Journalist Dorothy Thompson summarized the point at the time, saying, “There is no example in which a class or group of people who have once succeeded in expanding the area of their lives is ever persuaded again to restrict it.”2
Calling All Women
World War II was a battle of production. The Germans and Japanese had a ten-year head start on amassing weapons and wartime equipment, and the Allies suffered major material losses at Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor. The United States had to play catch-up, for victory clearly would go to the side with more airplanes, battleships, guns, and ammunition. Production was essential for victory, and women were essential for production. The Baltimore Sun put it succinctly by saying, “The problem of wartime womanpower is just as vital as that of wartime manpower.”3
Encouraged by the government’s propaganda machine, the nation’s news media dutifully called for action. Radio proved to be a successful venue in Seattle, where the city’s multitude of defense plants created an acute labor shortage. The local chamber of commerce appealed to station KJR and created a twice-weekly program called “Jobs for Women.” Each fifteen-minute broadcast began with general commentary on the importance of women to the war effort and then aired descriptions of specific jobs available—listing physical requirements, location, hours, and wages. The strategy worked. After a mere four weeks, 2,200 women had joined Seattle’s workforce, and city officials credited the radio station for the success.4
Nationwide, though, large-circulation newspapers and magazines did the lion’s share of the communicating. In many cases, the headlines told the story. A typical example from the New York Times read “Needed: 50,000 Nurses.” News magazines did their part as well, with Time announcing “Nightingales Needed” and Newsweek weighing in with “More Women Must Go to Work as 3,200,000 New Jobs Beckon.”5
Some publications were so committed to increasing the number of working women that they raised the possibility of forcing women to work outside the home, either as soldiers or as part of the defense buildup. The Washington Post headlined one such story “Should the United States Draft Its Womanpower?” In the text of the story, the Post stated, “Many American women favor the drafting of women—particularly young women—for military and industrial service.” To support that statement, the paper quoted the president of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women as saying, “We take men. There is no reason why we should not take women. This is war and you have to have organized effort. And that’s the way to get it.”6
The New York Times opted not to tell women readers to march onto the assembly line, but to show them how working women were making a difference. A typical article said of American women, “They are helping to build dive bombers for the Navy; they are making time fuses for high explosive shells in government arsenals; they are filling and sewing powder bags in a dozen newly built plants; they are turning out millions of rounds of machine-gun and small-arms ammunition.” Times editors surrounded the copy with photos that drove home the point, showing determined women of all ages working diligently at their tasks. The images carried captions such as “For precision work, women’s fingers are often defter than men’s” and “Where a leak may mean death, the job must be thoroughly done.”7
The Times joined the other publications in running strident pleas for women workers that read like they’d been written by government public relations flacks. One began, “Of our many war problems, one of the most acute is the need for graduate trained nurses. There are nurses now with American troops in Ireland, in Iceland and in Bataan, with fox holes dug beside their sleeping cots; there were four on Wake Island when the Japs got there. And many thousands more are needed.” The recruitment brochure-style rhetoric continued, “To any working person, one of the greatest sources of satisfaction and of resultant prowess is the sense of being needed and in demand.” The article was surrounded by photos of student nurses trying on their white caps for the first time.8
Before World War II, a woman working outside the home generally carried the stigma of economic necessity. A man’s wife or daughter bringing home a paycheck suggested that he wasn’t able to provide for his family. Eliminating this deeply ingrained perception was no easy task, but the American news media tried to do just that. One of their most effective strategies was to glamorize the working woman.
A full-page article in the Christian Science Monitor newspaper reported that women were doing their part in the war effort by shifting “From French Heels to Slacks.” That headline ran above a three-column photo that could just as easily have appeared in Vogue or Glamour. It showed a trio of beautiful young women with broad smiles on their faces as they walked confidently forward, arm in arm, above the caption, “In Jumper and Slacks They Work . . . on recess from tire-changing duties in Washington.” The accompanying article continued the upbeat tone, beginning, “The American ‘glamour girl’ is about to have her popularity crown usurped by the woman in overalls.” The article went on to wax admiringly of the millions of women who were redefining what it meant to be fashionable. “Short skirts, full blouses, and flowing bobs get caught in wheels and presses. Open-toed shoes pick up loose filings. French heels trip over cables and tools. Slack suits and low-heeled oxfords are almost a necessity in factory jobs.” In another feature, the Monitor made assembly-line workers sound like such Hollywood stars as Betty Grable, describing them as “alluring Grable-like damsels, clad in slacks and bandannas, and oozing glamour from every pore.”9
Papers also glamorized working women in their news stories. In an article about how women were changing factories, the New York Times managed to slip in the names of two of the country’s top women’s fashion designers. “In shops where delicate, dainty precision work is done,” the story said, “Lilly Dache can design a fetching bonnet to keep the hair from catching in the machinery. Molyneux can do a dashing uniform in gay colors and light fabrics.” The Times repeated the technique in an article reporting on the huge number of women working in arsenals and aircraft plants, this time creating an image that made assembly-line work sound like applying makeup by saying, “Under fluorescent lights they sit at benches that might well be dressing tables, and work with tools no larger than a manicure set.”10
Reprinted from the National Archives.
News magazines did their part as well. Life published a photo essay, titled “Girls in Uniform,” that gushed, “The woman worker in a war industry has acquired some of the glamor of the man in uniform. In labor’s social scale, she belongs to the elite. At the very top is the girl who works in an airplane factory. She is the glamor girl of 1942.” The article, surrounded by photos of beautiful working women, went on to describe America’s newest glamor girl as arriving at the factory at 6:30 a.m., “her hands smooth, her nails polished, her makeup and curls in order.” American Magazine took the trophy for glamorizing female workers via photos when it spread an image of four leggy young women across two pages to illustrate an article titled “Glory Gals.” The three-paragraph article about the Women’s Ambulance and Defense Corps was dwarfed by the titillating image of the women—dressed in scanty khaki shorts—frolicking in the surf as if they were contestants in the Miss America pageant.11
Praising Working Women
Although the glamorized descriptions gave the impression that working women looked like Hollywood stars, news outlets communicated that Rosie the Riveter was much more than just a pretty face. A Newsweek article about women journalists, for instance, ended with a statement clearly tailored to reassure male readers. “The younger generation of newspaperwomen,” the magazine wrote, “is composed of women who can do a man’s job but still look like women.”12
The leading voices in American journalism had positive words for working women outside their field, too. By late 1942, Newsweek was boasting that women were working in every area of defense production, stating admiringly, “Depending on the industry, women today make up from 10 to 88 per cent of total personnel in most war plants.” Time bragged that a female worker “can turn out half again as much work as a man,” and the New York Times began a story with the assertion, “All responsible people connected with industry today agree that women are equal to men as far as being able to do almost any industrial job.”13
In particular, the news media repeatedly applauded women’s superior dexterity, which meant they could assemble the tiny, intricate parts that went into the airplanes and battleships that were essential to the war effort. The New York Times reported that women excelled in other factory jobs as well. “Women of all ages are among our best welders and shipfitters,” the Times said. “A Danish woman welder of 53 can match the record of the best man we have found.”14
Radio joined the newspapers and magazines in trumpeting women’s abilities. A station in Portland, Oregon, sponsored a “Working Women Win Wars Week.” A typical script had the announcer saying women possessed “a limitless, ever-flowing source of moral and physical energy, working for victory.” After a second voice asked why the country needed female workers, the announcer responded, “You can’t build ships and planes and guns without them.”15
When it came to highlighting women’s strengths, the Los Angeles Times reported the fact that female workers had gained a reputation for being far superior to their male counterparts when it came to paying attention to detail. “Inspection is one of the departments in which women now play an important part,” the paper said. To support that statement, the Times went on to state, “Wright Aeronautical reports its 60 young women inspectors test 32,760,000 parts in a year.”16
Balancing Two Worlds
Because a third of the women who joined the World War II labor force were mothers, the nation’s journalists reassured the public that women could balance their responsibilities in the home with those in the workplace.
The quintessential article appeared in the New York Times under the headline “Woman War Worker: A Case History,” although it could just as easily have read “Wonder Woman: A Case History.” It began, “Alma is a pretty woman,” and then proceeded to describe a wife and mother with an “extremely feminine build” who managed to excel at her war plant job while also taking care of her husband and three children—also mentioning, of course, that “Alma didn’t complain much.” Indeed, her remarkable daily schedule didn’t allow for such luxuries.17
Alma began her day by arriving home from her nightshift job at the plant just in time to get Sally, Billy, and Tom Jr. off to school. After making her own breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen, she’d sleep for an hour until it was time to make lunch for the children. After feeding the six-, eight-, and nine-year-olds and washing the lunch dishes, she went back to bed until the children returned from school. Then she rose again to clean the house and prepare dinner so it would be on the table when Tom got home. After doing the dinner dishes and helping the kids with their homework, Alma slept for another hour before Tom woke her at 10 p.m. Alma survived on five or six hours of sleep a day while spending forty-eight hours a week on her job, which required her to stand and operate a large machine that spat out tiny aircraft parts. Her only day off was Sunday, which she spent doing the week’s laundry.18
The Times story ended with a textbook example of a passage crafted to inspire other American wives and mothers to march into the workforce. “When Alma measures the dullness and loneliness of a housewife’s job against the interest and companionship of a production job,” the paper said, “she inevitably concludes she does not wish to be a housewife or a housemother. She wishes, and will fight, to be a working wife and a working mother.” Melodramatic music would have provided a fitting background for the maudlin prose. “Alma is going to be present in the machine shop from here on out, come war, peace, or high water. She has the energy. She has the ability.” The story had built to a time-worn cliché that was delivered in the final sentence: “Where there’s a will, it finds a way.”19
Other articles were dotted with comparably supportive statements and rosy images to reassure mothers, as well as society in general, that it was possible—as well as patriotic—for women to balance the dual responsibilities of home and work. Many of those stories described the child care centers that exploded in number during the early 1940s as women began working outside the home as never before. Typical was a piece in the Chicago Tribune that began, “The sun shone thru the candy stripe drapes and danced in its own reflection on the tiny, bright yellow tables and chairs.” The story reported that this particular nursery school was one of eighty-four in Chicago serving the needs of working mothers. After praising the quality of the facilities as well as the commitment of the teachers, the Tribune gave the school an enthusiastic thumbs up, stating, “It is an ideal children’s haven.”20
By World War II, magazines had spent a century and a half—since the founding of Ladies Magazine in 1792—telling women that their “sphere” was defined by the four walls of the home. The campaign to attract women into the wartime labor force, however, required that a very different message be sent. With the fate of democracy hanging in the balance, newspapers and magazines promoted the new message with gusto, encouraging women workers to expand into myriad new directions.
American Magazine began one story by saying, “A woman, when she gets hopping mad or when she senses a peril to the things she loves, can do darn near anything.” It then took the next step of showcasing the fields in which women were breaking new ground. An article titled “Amazons of Aberdeen” reported that in 1941 not a single woman had been allowed to work at the Maryland testing grounds, but, three years later, 400 women were making sure Uncle Sam’s guns and ammunition were working properly before they were sent to the boys at the front. The article raved, “The girls fire big berthas, drive tanks over shell-torn terrain, toss 60-pound shells around as if they were biscuits. Tough babies, these gals? Well, hardly. Most of them are housewives, many of them mothers.” Photos showed women in a variety of positions—driving a tank, operating a .30-caliber machine gun, towing a truck out of the mud.21
Other publications also championed women expanding into fields previously reserved for men. The New York Times urged forestry officials to hire more women, pointing out that their keen powers of observation meant they could spot fires better than men could. Time campaigned for more women doctors by reporting that only 6 percent of US medical students were women, compared to 85 percent in Russia.22
Another major theme in the effort to expand the definition of “women’s work” was to increase the jobs open to African-American women. The war represented a second emancipation for black women, who’d always worked outside the home but, because of the increased acceptance of working women, were now able to advance beyond jobs as domestics. The drive for victory should outweigh the racism that pervaded many industries, Newsweek argued, as black women were as capable of working in aircraft plants and shipyards as white women were.23
Any list of women pioneering in new jobs during the war must include one who became the epitome of the intrepid new American woman: Margaret Bourke-White. Already highly regarded for her breathtaking 1930s Life magazine photos that transformed factories into Gothic cathedrals, she gained new visibility by becoming the first woman correspondent accredited to the army air force. In addition to covering the fighting, Bourke-White also served as the model for the army’s first set of uniforms for women correspondents—which included a pink party dress for special occasions.
One of Bourke-White’s most exciting stories came after the military brass refused to allow her to fly to North Africa, saying airplanes were too dangerous for women, and her subsequent decision to get there by sea instead. When her troopship was torpedoed, she wrote firsthand from a lifeboat. Bourke-White’s Life article on the harrowing experience featured not only stunning photos but also a poignant description of the life-and-death realities of wartime. “We were bobbing farther away from the big ship,” she wrote. “Just as a soldier let go of the raft to reach for a rope from the lifeboat, a wave flung the raft against him and cracked his skull. The skipper dived overboard, caught hold of the soldier and the two were dragged back into the lifeboat. Before the night was over, the soldier had died.”24
Capturing the Moment in Pictures
Bourke-White’s photo credit line was the most famous to appear in the nation’s news publications, but it wasn’t the only one. For at the same time that newspapers and magazines were using words to propel women into the workforce, they were also showcasing images for that same purpose. By the 1940s, journalists had become well aware of the ability of high-quality photos to touch the emotions of the American public. Editors filled their pages with images of thousands of dedicated women, most of them wearing Rosie the Riveter’s confident expression.
Life, with its large format and status as the nation’s first photo news magazine, set the standard. Bourke-White’s stirring account of her rescue at sea came to life with a half-page photo at the beginning of the article. It showed a rescue plane circling above a crowded boat filled with men and women waving, cheering, and raising the V-for-victory salute.25
© LIFE magazine/Getty Images
The photographer’s artistry in her “Women in Steel” photo essay defied the two-dimensional limitations of a magazine. She depicted the heroic women workers as far too strong and powerful to be captured on a printed page: Florence Romanowski poured molten-hot liquid steel into molds as sparks burst like fireworks on every side. Elizabeth Laba heated the iron ingots in her oven to 2,300 degrees. Rosalie Ivy, described in the caption as “a husky Negro laborer,” mixed a special mud to seal the casting hole that molten iron would flow through on its way to the blast furnace.26
Bourke-White was drawn to women who were rugged and robust, but most photographers of the era—the vast majority of them men—preferred more feminine beauties. For the photos to accompany his “Girls in Uniform” photo essay, Life photographer J. R. Eyerman focused on Marguerite Kershner, who meticulously applied rouge, eye shadow, and lipstick before arriving at the factory. “Although Marguerite looks like a Hollywood conception of a factory girl,” the caption below one of her half dozen photos read, “she and thousands like her are doing hard, vital work.” In keeping with journalism’s commitment to glamorizing the working woman, Kershner also was shown enjoying an active social life by bowling and roller skating.27
Regardless of the publication, the most ubiquitous image was of a woman at her work station, focusing on her given task. Whether Time published a medical story debunking rumors that riveting caused breast cancer or Newsweek reported that a new study had found women less inclined than men to move from plant to plant, the articles came complete with images of women diligently at their posts—whether drilling in Time or inspecting artillery cartridges in Newsweek. The New York Times dotted its pages with close-up photos of Rosie the Riveters as well, showing women intently welding, tuning engines, and operating grinders on the assembly line.28
Changing the Social Order
World War II revolutionized the role of women in American society. When the international crisis created a desperate need for American workers, women responded with impressive quantities of enthusiasm, wherewithal, and—above all—ability. Between 1940 and 1944, the number of women in the workforce increased by more than half, proving to women themselves and to the public at large that “girls” were fully capable of succeeding in the workplace. What’s more, they simultaneously shattered the conventional stereotypes of “women’s work” and made major strides toward destroying sex labels.
The social revolution that began during the war didn’t stop with the armistice. Even though a huge number of working women gave up their jobs—many against their will—at the end of the war, others remained in the workplace. In late 1946, 1 million more women were working in factories than had been there in 1940, and almost all the 2 million women who worked in offices during the war stayed at their desks when peace returned. The change was most noticeable among married women, with the percentage of American couples in which both husband and wife worked leaping from 11 percent before the war to 20 percent after it. The idea of women working outside the home clearly was becoming an accepted part of middle-class life.29
Numerous scholars have concluded that the news media and their powerful influence over public opinion were central to bringing about this radical change in the social order. “None of the changes in women’s work could have occurred without the active approval and encouragement of the principal instruments of public opinion,” wrote historian William H. Chafe. “Newspapers and magazines did their part in the publicity build-up by depicting Rosie the Riveter as a national heroine and exhorting others to join her.” Other scholars have expressed similar sentiments. In her study of World War II women, Leila J. Rupp wrote, “For the first time, the working woman dominated the public image. Women were riveting housewives in slacks, not mothers, domestic beings, or civilizers.” In another study, Susan M. Hartmann concluded, “Media images of women were expansive, widening the range of acceptable behavior, providing positive examples of unconventional women, and blurring traditional gender distinctions.”30
By calling for women workers and then praising the accomplishments of the women who responded, journalism—through both words and images—contributed immeasurably to the advancement of American women. Even though the Fourth Estate’s primary motivation for this proactive effort was to help the United States win the war, a byproduct of that campaign was to push women toward developing a broader and often more fulfilling role in society.
In the decades that followed, conservative forces attempting to maintain the status quo would find it no easier to turn back the emerging sense of worth and potential among women than to turn back the hands of time. Social movements advance along a continuum, with each step forward leading to the next. The working women of the 1940s, with the news media’s assistance, laid the psychological groundwork—creating the mindset and arousing the consciousness—of the next generation, paving the way for the women’s liberation initiatives that erupted in the 1960s.
