Women in the U.S.

Overview

 WW2 provided unprecedented opportunities for American women to take jobs they

were never able to, particularly in the defense/arms industry.

 Women faced challenges in:

- overcoming cultural stereotypes against working women

- finding proper childcare during working hours

On the home front

 WW2 is falsely identified as the first time American women worked outside of the

home in large numbers.

 About 1/4 of women worked outside the home in 1940.

 However, before WW2, women worked but only “traditionally female” professions

such as typing or sewing.

 Women were also supposed to leave the work force as soon as they had children or

got married.

 5 million women entered the workforce between 1940-1945.

 The gap in the labor force created by departing soldiers gave women more

opportunities.

 WW2 led many women to take jobs in the defense industry and gave them the

opportunity to work in places that were thought of as exclusive to men, like the

aircraft industry, where a majority of the workers were women by 1943.

 The majority of women took over factory or office jobs that had been held by men.

 Although women earned more money than they ever did, it was still far less than men

received for doing the same jobs. Nevertheless, many got a degree of financial self-

reliance.
The challenges of wartime work

 The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, urged her husband Franklin Roosevelt to approve

the first US government childcare facilities under the Community Facilities Act of

1942.

 Seven centers, servicing 105,000 children, were built.

 The First Lady also urged industry leaders to build model childcare facilities for their

workers.

 All of this didn’t meet the full need for childcare for working mothers.

 In order to recruit women for factory jobs that were male dominated, the government

created a propaganda campaign centered on a figure known as Rosie the Riveter, who

was tough yet feminine.

 To reassure men that women would stay feminine, some factories gave female

employees lessons on applying makeup.

 Keeping American women looking their best was believed to be important for morale.

 African American women struggled to find jobs in the defense industry, and found

that white women were didn’t want to work beside them when they did.

 Even though factory work allowed black women to quit their jobs as domestic

servants for a time and earn better wages, most were fired after the war and forced to

continue working as maids and cooks.

 Japanese American women in western states had little access to new job

opportunities, given that the policy of Japanese internment (confined as prisoners for

military or political reasons) had resettled them in distant locations.

 Cramped into converted barns, living with as many as eight people in a single room,

Japanese American women struggled to keep an appearance of normalcy in the face

of poverty.
Women in the war

 Approximately 350,000 American women joined the military during WW2.

 They worked as nurses, drove trucks, repaired airplanes, and performed clerical work

to free up men for combat.

 Women who joined the air force flew planes from factories to military bases. Some

were killed in combat or captured as prisoners of war.

 Over 1,600 female nurses received various decorations for courage under fire.

 Many women also moved so that they can in a variety of civil service jobs.

 Others worked as chemists and engineers, developing weapons for the war. This

included thousands of women who were recruited to work on the Manhattan Project,

developing the atomic bomb.

 Minority women, like minority men, served in the war as well, though the Navy did

not allow black women until 1944.

 As the American military was still segregated for the majority of WW2, African

American women served in black-only units and the African American nurses were

only allowed to attend to black soldiers.

Women after the war

 Social commentators worried that when men returned from military service there

would be no jobs available for them, and warned women to return to their “rightful

place” as soon as the war is over.

 Although as many as 75% of women reported that they wanted to continue working

after WW2, a large amount of them were laid off.

 Despite the stereotype of the “1950s housewife” by 1950 about 32% of women were

working outside the home and about half were married.

 WW2 had solidified the notion that women were in the workforce to stay.