Women at War: Life on the Homefront in World War II | BRIdge from the Past

0:01 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bridge from the Past art across US history. I’m your host, Mary, and I am back with more primary source visuals, this time to look at the story of women and the roles they played during World War II. As we look at these images, I’d like you to consider why the experience of women is an integral

0:21 part of the American story of World War II. Let’s jump in. The women played a variety of roles on the home front during World War II, and I’m specifically going to focus in on the 8.5 million women who entered the workforce during the war. So about 350,000 women enlisted

0:43 in the armed forces, which is of course playing a huge part of World War II. But we’re going to target women who went to work. When men enlisted and went off to war, it created a labor shortage. And that meant that lots of jobs are opening up for women. So this wasn’t just clerical jobs like jobs at the desk or a government job or something like that, but jobs in heavy industry,

1:05 where previously you wouldn’t really see very many women workers in particularly the weapons industry, shipyards and the aviation industry. So building airplanes, which is what we’re going to look at today, saw a huge increase in female workers. So because women are playing a huge part in supporting the war effort

1:25 and World War II is a total war where everything is being mobilized to support the war effort, propaganda will target women in a couple of specific ways. So it might ask them to conserve resources like plant a victory garden or reuse things, don’t throw things away. It could ask them to buy war bonds to support the war effort and it could also encourage them to join the workforce,

1:48 which is what we’re going to look at today. And in making this propaganda, you had the government actually creating images itself. And the government is also going to partner with private firms to create images. And that’s exactly what we’re going to see in our very first image, which is the iconic we can do it, or as she’s commonly referred to, Rosie the Riveter.

2:12 So I love this image. How can you not love this image? You have this woman, she’s strong, she’s confident, she looks powerful. You have these bold colors, red and yellow and blue, and you have this really motivational image. We are saying image. We can do it. So this image was actually produced by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation for the US.

2:35 Government and it was made in 1943 and it hung in a factory for two weeks to help enlist women to join the workforce. So that’s what’s so interesting to me about this image, is that it only hung in a factory for two weeks. So the idea that this image, which you see her everywhere,

2:57 she’s on cups, she’s on T shirts, you see her all over the place in the present day was not seen by very many people during World War II. It was only seen by these people who worked in the factory. And after the two weeks, this image was taken down and more propaganda posters encouraging people to join the workforce were put up.

3:19 And actually very few of those images hung or I’m sorry, very few of those images actually featured women. So this Rosie the Riveter actually comes back in the 1980s. She sort of makes a resurgence and that’s when we really start to see her all over the place. But at the time, not many people actually saw this image.

3:40 The Rosie that a lot of people would have been familiar with is this Rosie the Riveter. So this Rosie the Riveter, and you can see she actually has her name on her lunch pail here, was painted by the artist Norman Rockwell. And it was on the cover of the May 29, 1943 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

4:02 So this Rosie would have been seen by many Americans. And even after she appeared as this magazine cover, this image toured the country with other Norman Rockwell images to raise money for war bonds. So this is the rosy that most people would know. And I was not nearly as familiar with this image as the previous We Can Do It Rosie.

4:24 But she is really interesting. So she has a Rivet gun. So that’s where this riveter comes from. And a rivet gun. I’m going to do my best to explain it is it’s a very heavy piece of machinery that sort of drives basically big metal nails to hold something together. So you would see these in the construction of aircraft during World War II.

4:47 So it’s a heavy piece of machinery. And she’s sitting there. She’s obviously she’s on her lunch break. She is eating a ham sandwich. I know it’s ham because I looked it up in the notes about her. And the woman who actually posed for this was a 19 year old phone operator from Vermont. And she was actually really petite and she didn’t work in a factory.

5:10 So Norman Rockwell actually created this image. This rosie is very strong. She’s dressed for some heavy labor. She’s got her overalls on, work shoes. She’s sitting, having lunch with her heavy piece of machinery. She’s got the American flag behind her. She’s powerful, she’s strong, and she’s literally supporting the war effort with her machinery.

5:34 The other thing that’s very interesting about this Rosie Riveter is that her foot is on the book Mein Kampf which was Adolf Hitler’s autobiography. And you can see the swastika down here as well. So this is almost it is saying, women, we’re going to get to work because we have to crush our enemy, right?

5:56 Hitler is obviously the enemy, one of the enemies in this war. And this work, the work that she’s doing is supporting that war effort. So it’s very motivational. I would say it’s inspirational. You can see this Rosie is very strong and she’s doing her part to address the war. What did these real Rosie derivatives actually look like?

6:19 So that’s what I want to show you some pictures of as well. So here is a woman who worked who was working on a bomber in Fort Worth, Texas in 1942. And this is an actual here’s a rivet gun. So you can see she’s driving these big rivets into the bomber to put it together. And she does kind of look like Rosie are too rosy.

6:40 She’s wearing these coveralls. She has her hair pulled back. I love that she’s got this fabulous red nail polish on of someone who’s too lazy to paint their nails ever. I appreciate that. This woman has a nice manicure as she goes to work here at the bomber plant in 1942. Here’s another image that I’ll show you of a woman at work during World War II.

7:03 Again, we’ve got a hand drill. She’s working on an airplane. This is a dive bomber in a factory in Tennessee from 1943. This is an African American woman. So it’s not just white women who are going to work to support the effort. It’s also African American women as well. And like the armed forces, of course, in the 1940s, unfortunately,

7:26 racial discrimination and segregation is the norm. So even though we have men and women of color who are supporting the war effort in a variety of ways, they’re still being segregated and they’re still experiencing discrimination, which is, of course, a sad truth of the American story during World War II. But you can see here again, we have another woman.

7:48 She’s wearing the red bandana she’s got on the coveralls. She’s also got on red nail polished. I think I might have to paint my nails later today. So she’s doing her part to support the war effort as well. I have one more real life Rosie to show you. Here she is. So this woman again, she’s holding a rivet gun.

8:09 She’s driving these rivets into a bomber. And this is in Corpus Christi, Texas. So again, you have this woman in she has her coveralls. Her hair is pulled back. She’s working in heavy industry. So this is a job where you would see very few women before the war effort. But because of the labor shortage,

8:29 you have all these women going to work during World War II. So here we have a real Rosie the Rivetor on the left working on an airplane in Corpus Christi, Texas. And on the right you have the Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter, again, which is the Rosie the River that people during World War II would have been familiar with,

8:50 not the fabulous we can do an image that we’re so familiar with today. But again, women played a huge part in filling the labor shortage during the Second World War, and many of them were married women, and many of them were mothers. And as any working mother can tell you, they struggled to balance childcare and work. And this actually became such a problem that the US.

9:13 Government steps in. And in 1940, the Lantham Act was passed that gave grants to communities where defense production was a major industry. And in 1942, Eleanor Roosevelt is actually sort of encouraging her husband to do more and he passed the Community Facilities Act, which leads to the creation of the first US.

9:35 Government sponsored child care center. So women definitely played a huge part. Many of them had to juggle work and home and they’re receiving about wages at about 50% of what a man would receive. So even though they’re doing their part, the story of it’s not quite equal yet.

9:55 But there’s I think what Rosie the rembiter, the image, and what an actual woman who is riveting can show is that women played a huge part and they’re strong and they’re capable. And without their work, I would say that our victory in the war wouldn’t have been quite as we needed.

10:16 Everybody had to do their parts to pitch in. So I’m going to go back to my initial question and toss it back out to you guys. So how did women support the war effort during the Second World War? And why is this an essential part of the story of the United States during the Second World War? I’d love to know what you think, so please let us know.

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