Rosie the Riveter Remembers

Abstract

In all wars fought by Americans, women have played major roles on the homefront as well as on the battlefield. During World War II, the government and media launched a cam paign to encourage women to support the war effort by getting a job. (These were, ironically, the same women who had been told during the Great Depression that they should not take jobs from men.) By the end of war, six million women had entered the labor force for the first time. American women put on their work overalls-they handled lathes, cut dies, traced blueprints, and inspected plane parts. They also filled many civil service jobs, especially those involving clerical work. They ran the trains and busses and did every type of work imaginable. Women made up twenty percent ofthe labor force in 1920; by 1945 they comprised thirty-six percent. Once the war was won, government and businesses launched a new campaign to return women to their domestic sphere as consumers. Women were laid off from their jobs despite the fact that many would have preferred to continue working. Companies reinstated their prewar policies against the hiring of married women. But the seeds had been sown for what became the women's movement of the 1970s. Mothers like Frankie Cooper (whose reflections appear below) told their daugh ters, don't have to be just a homemaker. You can be anything you want to be.