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Women and World War II:

Would life ever be the same?

As a result of the propaganda American women, whether they were

motivated by patriotism, economic benefits, independence, social
interaction, or necessity, joined the workforce at never before seen
rates. In July 1944, when the war was at it's peak over 19 million
women were employed in the United States, more than ever before.

Introduction
Trying to hold the homefront together while there was a war waging
abroad was not an easy task. Women were not only asked to complete
the daily chores that were normally expect of them, but they were
asked to go to work. Suddenly their very private lives were turned into
a very public and patriotic cause. The changes that women underwent
in the late 1930's and early 1940's would be felt by generations to
come.
Traditionally the womans place was thought to be in the home. She
was responsible for cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, and
looking her best. So when the war broke out, and it was clear that
America would not be able to win the war without the help of their
women, the "traditional" housewife and mother turned into wartime
worker.
This webpage will examine the new role that women assumed once
the war began, the problems that they face both inside the home and
on the job, and the effects that the war had on them.
A Call to Arms
One of the most famous posters of the World War II era,
it shows "Rosie the Riveter" flexing her muscles.
Clearly traditional roles have been put on hold.
The demands put on American industry by the war machine were
immense. With some ten million men at war and the rest of the male
population at work, it was clear the only way America would be able
to win the war was if it enlisted large numbers of women for
employment. America needed it's women to go to work to build the
planes, tanks, and ships needed to fight Hitler. World War II, more so
than any other war, was a war based on production, and so it was
time to bring American women into industry.
So the government teamed up with industry, the media, and women's
organizations in an effort to urge them to join the labor force because
telling women it was their "patritoic duty" to go to work. (Left- A
propaganda poster. "Women in the War, We Can't Win Without
Them" NWDNS -44-PA-233 - NAIL
<http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html>)But patriotism was not the
only incentive that the War Manpower Commission used to lure
women into the workforce. Many recruitment programs used the idea
of increased economic prosperity to attract women into the
workforce. In fact some posters went so far as to glamorize war work,
as well as stress the importance women working in non-traditional
jobs.
Still much of the propaganda of the time used emotional appeal
paired with patriotism. Women were constasntly being reminded that
their husbands, sons, and brothers were in danger because they were
not receiving the supplies they needed. Slogans such as "Victory is in
Your Hands," "We can do it!," and "Women the war needs you!" were
all used to convince women that their country's need were more
important than their individual comfort. Leila Rupp, in her book
Mobilizing Women for War points out that the posters and modes of
advertisement used to mobilize women into the workforce stressed
the temporary and vital nature of the situation. She points out that by
suggesting that the current situation was only temporary it "allowed
the public to accept the participation of women in unusual jobs
without challenging the basic belief about women's roles."
Leila Rupp, in her book Mobilizing Women for War points out that
the posters and modes of advertisement used to mobilize women into
the workforce stressed the temporary and vital nature of the
situation. She points out that by suggesting that the current situation
was only temporary it "allowed the public to accept the participation
of women in unusual jobs without challenging the basic belief about
women's roles."
But applying for a job was not necessarily as easy as it appeared to be.
While their boys were fighting for equality and human rights abroad,
American women were getting discriminated against at home.
Though women were turning out for jobs at alarming rates, many
employers refused to hire them (even though they had unmet labor
requiements.) Some employers outrightly refused to higher women,
while others set ridiculously low highering quotas for women, and
still some agreed to employee women, yet they refused to offer them
jobs previously "assigned to men." These practices left women feeling
very confused as to how America wanted it's women to behave. Most
people believed that men should be the sole breadwinner in the
family, and as a result women were amoung the last hired in the early
stages of the war.
Though several million women were highered, they were not
necessarily treated the same as their male counterparts. In 1942, the
National War Labor Board (NWLB) attempted to erase some of the
long standing inequalities in women's pay, when they decided to
employ an equal pay principle. According to the NWLB, women
would be paid the same as men for the same or comparable work.
However, these standards were seldomly enforced. Most emplyers
thought that the traditional women's pay scale was acceptable, and
some reasoned there was no need to make women's pay comparable
to men's because women's work was easier. But this was far from the
case. Women who joined the labor force as a result of World War II
were often referred to as "production soldiers." Their standard work
week was 48 hours, though many women frequently worked
overtime, Sunday was their only day off, and most vacations and
holidays were cancelled
Though a popular example of a wartime woman worker "Rosie" did
more than just "rivet." Women of all ages operated lare cranes which
were used to move heavy tanks and artillery. Some women loaded
and fired machine guns and other weapons to make sure they worked.
Other women operated hydralic presses, while some worked as
volunteer fire fighters. Some women who formerly worked as
saleswomen, maids, or waitresses, took over more essential jobs such
as welders, riveters, drill press operators, and taxi cab drivers.
Women found themselves in participating in every aspect of the war
industry from making military clothing to building fighter jets,
American women worked day and night.

Woman Fight the War from Home

Not all women were asked to join the workforce. Infact, Paul McNutt,
the Chairman of the War Manpower Commission, issued a 1942
directive which stated, "no women responsible for the care of young
children should be encouraged or compelled to seek employment
which deprives their children of essential care until all other sources
of supply are exhausted." This directive paired with the fact that there
was much public resistance to the idea of working mothers,
contributed to the low rate of women aged 25 to 34 that participated
in the labor force. These women who elected not to go to work
contributed to the war effort in a different way.
Suddenly as a result of the war much of the supplies that a housewife
used to complete her everyday chores were gone. A 1940's housewife
could not buy a staple like sugar at the grocery store, because the
sugar cane supply was significantly diminshed. What sugar was left
was vital to the war effort, because it makes molasses; molasses
makes ethyl alcohol; and alcohol makes the powder which fires guns
and serves as Torpedo fuel, dynamite, nitrocotton, and other
chemicals desperately needed by the American military. The
availability of this product to the American people was very limited
and as a result it was aconsidered a "rationed" item. This meant that a
housewife could only purchase so much of it at a time, assuming of
course that she could find it at the store to begin with.

Other items that women needed to ration were silk, nylon, rayon,
cotton, and wool. All of these materials were in high demand because
they made parachutes, aircraft and military clothing, tents, and even
gunpowder bags. Food items that were rationed were coffee, tea,
butter, and meat. As a result, housewifes had to drive around to
several different markets to find the supplies that they needed to
create a well balanced meal. This too created a problem given the fact
that gasoline was rationed as well.
Another obstcle that the early 1940's housewife ran into was the
shortage of stell. In 1943 civilians were only alloted 15% of the
naiton's steel production. This caused the rationing of such items as
bottled, canned, dried, and frozen vegetables, as well as canned fruits,
jouices, and soups. Women who lived in big cities felt this squeeze
more than ever, while women who lived on farms and in small towns
were able to garden and preserve their own supply of fresh produce.
So in an effort to help the war effort, the government promoted
"Victory Gardens." These were small gardens that family could have
in their back yard which produced tomatos, lettuce, and beans and
other produce that would normally be found in the grocery store.
As evident by the above section, being a housewife during the war was
not easy. These women were still expected to keep house, dress, and
cook as they had before the war started, however they had to do so
with very limited resources. It seemed like everytime they turned
around another product was being rationed, and it was thier job to
learn how to deal with it. Women became excellent troops of the war
effort in their own homes for they did, for the most part, what they
were told to do by the U.S. federal government. Impart the rationing
system was so successful because of the great stives made by
American women.

Rosie the Riveter:

The Typical Life of a Wartime Working Wife and Mother
In order for women to fulfill both their function as a wife and mother
and their duty to country, some women took night jobs. The typical
day for a wartime woman who had a night job is explained by Doris
Weatherford in her book American Women and World War II. She
uses the example of a woman named Alma, who because she worked
nights would often times get home just as her children were getting
ready to leave for school. Immediately she would send her children
off to school, then she would eat breakfast, clean the mess in the
kitchen, and then finally go to bed around 10 am. She would get about
an hour and a half of sleep before the alarm went off to tell her that
her kids would be home for lunch. When they got home she would
feed them, and send them off again. After that it was back to bed until
3 pm, when they arrived home again. Once the children were home
for the day she would clean the house, do the laundary (if there was
time), and then cook dinner with the limited amount of supplies
avaiable to her. The family would eat when her husband got home
around 6pm, and after she cleaned the kitchen she would take a nap
unitl she needed to leave for work at 10pm. The average woman who
worked nights and still took care of her family averaged about five to
six hours of sleep a day, but they were never consecutive.
And despite of all of the responsibilities and burdens women endured
during the war years, housework was almost never shared. Most men
did not lift a finger to help their wives, because they felt that they
were in fact doing their share by allowing their wives to work. Most of
the accounts of Rosie the Riveter suggested that despite her daily
struggles, she asked for nothing and continued to meet her family
responsibilities, as well as the new responsibilities dictated to her as
awartime worker.
By the end of 1943, one-third of women war workers were mothers of
children living at home. For these women, life was very arduouss,
because the balancing act between one's home and one's job was
more difficult then than it is now. The reason for this is that
housework in the 1940's was far more laborous than it is today. This
was the era of cooking from scratch and washiing dishes by hand.
Washing clothes in the 1940's consisted of wringer washine machines,
a tub of rinse water, and an outdoor clothees line. Clothes dryers or
dry cleaners did not exist, and housewifes starched and pressed
clothes by themselves.
In some cases women had to devote a whole day to doing laundary
because it was such a tedious task. In addition to this burden, Banks
were only open in the mid-day hours, and so women who worked jobs
during the day had a difficult time keeping their financial obligations
in order. There were also very few grocery stores that stayed open at
night to accomodate women who worked. Wartime working women,
often times, devoted their Sunday's off to cleaning and catching up
from what they could not complete during the week. Because of the
fact that some women had a hard time completing such tasks as going
to the grocery store and bank some women literally had to quit their
jobs in order to fulfill their job to their family.
Mothers who joined the workforce while their husbands were away or
mothers who had small children not yet in school had an even bigger
burden to bare due to the lack of child care facilities available to them.
Section B of article IV of Paul Mc Nutt's 1942 War Manpower
Commission directive stated that,"If any such women are unable to
arrange for satisfactory care of their cildren...adequate facilities
should be provided...Such facilities should be developed as
community projects and not under the auspices of individual
employers or employer groups."
However, cities did not know how to handle such a dilemna and
instead of forcing industry to deal with the problem, the burden was
shifted to state and local governments. Though the Landam Act, a
federally subsidized child care system, attempted to deal with these
problems it fell short. At the programs peak it only had about 3,000
child care facilities, which cared for about 130,000 children. The
government simply could not develop a comprehensive system for
dealing with the large number of mothers going to work. With so
much else to do, child care facilities were not regarded as high
priority, and as a result some women quit their jobs to take care of
their families.
There was a small faction of women however, that were against
America's participation in the war. They called themselves the
Mother's Movement and they were comprised of anywhere from five
to six million women who recognized the goodness of facism and in
doing so respected it's leaders. This organization was comprised of
antisemities and as a result they believed that the Roosevelt
administration was controlled by Jews as well as communist. They
were devout Protestants who aligned themselves with the ideals of the
Women's Christian Temperance Union. Though they wre not a
particularly strong force they did conduct some demonstrations as
well as publish some articles professing their beliefs.
The Effects of the War on Women
When America achieved victory in August of 1945 millions of people
celebrated. The war was finally over and millions of men would finally
be able to retrun to their homes. However, when the fighting stopped,
the war machine, which had mobilized millions of women to work,
ceased. No longer was there a need for women to leave their husband
and children to work eight hours in a factory, they could once again
stay at home and take care of their families. But for some women this
just wasn't enough anymore.
The development of wartime economy had given women more
freedom than they had ever had before. Though they did face some
discrimination in the workforce it was minimal compared to that
which they were privy to in pre-world war II times. For the first time,
women were able to experience some sort of social and economic
mobility. Suddenly women were faced with choices, and by
excersising these choices they were able to explore their own
individuality and independence. With the war over and the break up
of the war machine women who were urged to go to work to suport
their country were now in jeopardy of losing their jobs.
But the future of women's place in the workforce did not depend soley
on the state of the post war economy, infact much of it would depend
on the women themselves. For the past three years women were
subjected to long hours, little benefits, low-cost and low-quality child
care facilities, not to mention almost unprecedented physical
demands, it was possible, that for many women losing their job was a
blessing. The fact was that only time would tell how women would
react to the postwar period.
Another factor in deciding the postwar place for women in the
workforce was public opinion. Many people just assumed that
American women would just return to their homes voluntarily. More
still viewed the the American homemaker turned "production soldier"
would understand that her positions was a temporal as a soldiers.
They reasoned that millions of men were asked to leave their job to
become soldiers, and when the war was over they were expected to
return home to work.

The fact of the matter is that there was no one typically femine
response to the postwar era. The choices that women made and the
reasons why they made them were as unique and individual as they
were themselves. Some women wre glad when the war ended because
that meant that they could go back to the home where they felt they
belonged. Other women returned home not because they wanted to,
but because their husband and much of the american society believed
they should. Still other women ledt their jobs, because the return of
their soldiers meant the ability to resume pre-war plans (i.e. marriage
or pregnancy.)

Yet there were some women who elected to stay at work. They
enjoyed their new found independence, and the income they had
brought in was either important to their own livelihood, in the event
that they were single, or their families. According to Karen Anderson
in her book Wartime Women ,Women, who worked in defense
centers during the years of 1944-1945, responded to a survey
conducted by the Women's Bureau in which 75% of them said that
they planned to continue working.

One thing is for certainthe effects of World War Ii would be felt for
years to come. Women had experienced new oppurtunities, a sense of
independence, and were expereincing their own individuality. Though
some of the women that continued to work after the war did receive
wage cuts and some even received demontions, they had made
progress. The war allowed women to make decisions, and it gave
them a chanc eto fight for their rights. And there is no doubt that the
consequences of the World War II (the discrimination, job cuts, and
wage inequalities) led to the development of many of the civil rights
movements of the 1950's.