A Plan of the Investigation The aim of this investigation is to research the question, “How did the involvement of women in World War II on the home front affect the role and position of women in society?” The scope of the investigation has one main focus: women who remained in the United States and how they pushed the role of women in society forward. Within this topic, it is broken down into women who joined the labor force and women who remained in the household. B Summary of Evidence There were varying levels of involvement of women during World War II, but this investigation will be looking at women who remained in the United States of America. There are two subsections: women who joined the previously male-dominated business realm, and women who continued to work in the domestic sphere. At the beginning of WWII, it was evident that to win the war, weapons and aircraft would have to be produced; but because most men were overseas, women had to manufacture those goods (Weatherford 154). It was recorded later that of 1950s female workers, 22% entered the work force during the war (Goldin 8). Some manufacturers modified their factories to make them better for female workers, but most did not approve of women in the workplace. To discourage them, women were paid less for doing the same job as men (Weatherford 173). The average skilled female worker in 1944 made $23.44 less than the average man per week, earning just $31.21 (Hartmann). Fortunately, many women were not working for the pay, they were working for the war effort (Weatherford 180). Women wanted to decide whether or not they could start a career, so they came in droves to work (Weatherford 170). At most, there were 19,170,000 female workers (Hartma... ... middle of paper ... ...II. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Print. Library of Congress. Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters During World War II. Washington D.C.: Library of Congress, 1995. Print. McEuen, Melissa A. Making War, Making Women: Femininity and Duty on the American Home Front, 1941-1945. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Print. "Rosie the Riveter." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Ed. Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk. Detroit: Gale, 1999. Student Resources in Context. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. Weatherford, Doris. American Women and World War II. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Print. “Welcome.” Jordynn Jack, PhD. n.p., 18 Nov. 2011. Web. 30 April 2014. "World War II." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. Ed. Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk. Detroit: Gale, 1999. Student Resources in Context. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
To begin with, there are many events in United States history that have shaped our general understanding of women’s involvement in economics, politics, the debates of gender and sexuality, and so forth. Women for many centuries have not been seen as a significant part of history, however under thorough analyzation of certain events, there are many women and woman-based events responsible for the progressiveness we experience in our daily lives as men, women, children, and individuals altogether. Many of these events aid people today to reflect on the treatment of current individuals today and to raise awareness to significant issues that were not resolved or acknowledged in the past.
The role of American women has changed significantly from the time the nation was born, to the modern era of the 1950s and 1960s. Many people, "... believed that women's talent and energies ... would be put to the better [use] in the new republic." (Clinton 3) Clearly showing that society has seen the importance of the women's talents and that their skills can be very useful, exploited this and thus, the change of the women's role was inevitable. Society has understood that the roles of women played an important role on all parts of life.
Salisbury, Joyce E. and Andrew E Kersten. “Women in the United States, 1960–1990.” Daily Life through History.ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
World War Two was the period where women came out of their shells and was finally recognized of what they’re capable of doing. Unlike World War One, men weren’t the only ones who were shined upon. Women played many significant roles in the war which contributed to the allied victory in World War Two. They contributed to the war in many different ways; some found themselves in the heat of the battle, and or at the home front either in the industries or at homes to help with the war effort as a woman.
World War II opened a new chapter in the lives of Depression-weary Americans. The United States of America had an unusual importance in the war, it had been spared the physical destruction that had taken place throughout the world. Americans on the home front did not see the fighting and brutality as other countries experienced it. However, the events and changes on the home front due to the World War transformed America. One of the greatest conversions was that of the American woman. Women around the country were transformed from the average house wife into a person with a voice and most importantly a purpose.
For over centuries, society had established the societal standard of the women. This societal standard pictured the ideal American woman running the household and taking care of the children while her husband provided for the family. However, between 1770 and 1860, this societal standard began to tear at the seams. Throughout this time period, women began to search for a new ideal of American womanhood by questioning and breaking the barriers society had placed upon them.
As many women took on a domestic role during this era, by the turn of the century women were certainly not strangers to the work force. As the developing American nation altered the lives of its citizens, both men and women found themselves struggling economically and migrated into cities to find work in the emerging industrialized labor movement . Ho...
World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind.
In a 1944 magazine article, Eleanor Roosevelt claimed that American “women are serving actively in many ways in this war [World War II], and they are doing a grand job on both the fighting front and the home front.”1 While many women did indeed join the workforce in the 1940s, the extent and effects of their involvement were as contested during that time as they are today. Eleanor Roosevelt was correct, however, in her evaluation of the women who served on the fighting front. Although small in number due to inadequate recruitment, the women who left behind their homes and loved ones in order to enlist in the newly established Women’s Auxiliary Army Corp (WAAC), and later the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), were deemed invaluable to the war effort.
When all the men were across the ocean fighting a war for world peace, the home front soon found itself in a shortage for workers. Before the war, women mostly depended on men for financial support. But with so many gone to battle, women had to go to work to support themselves. With patriotic spirit, women one by one stepped up to do a man's work with little pay, respect or recognition. Labor shortages provided a variety of jobs for women, who became street car conductors, railroad workers, and shipbuilders. Some women took over the farms, monitoring the crops and harvesting and taking care of livestock. Women, who had young children with nobody to help them, did what they could do to help too. They made such things for the soldiers overseas, such as flannel shirts, socks and scarves.
Many factors affected the changes in women’s employment. The change that occurred went through three major phases: the prewar period in the early 1940s, the war years from 1942-1944, and the post war years from around 1945-1949. The labor shortage that occurred as men entered the military propelled a large increase in women’s entrance into employment during the war. Men's return to the civilian workforce at the end of the war caused the sudden drop to prewar levels. The cause of the sudden decline during post war years of women in the paid workforce is unclear. Many questions are left unanswered: What brought women into the war industry, ...
Firstly, the work women did when men left for the war, was very crucial and led to the Allied win. Demand of food and munitions overseas was not being fulfilled because farmers and factory workers went to France for the war. Work wasn't getting done and as a ...
In this semester, we have read several books arguing that wars brought women the opportunity to enter the presumed men’s spaces such as entering military industry to replace the drafted male soldiers. However, was the gain permanent? From Home/Front edited by Hagemann and Schüler-Springorum, we learned that the postwar German authorities desperately attempted to restore the status quo ante in gender relations. Ruth Milkman’s social history Gender at Work presented a similar scenario faced by American female workers in their workplace during and after the WWII.
The film titled, “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter”, looks at the roles of women during and after World War II within the U.S. The film interviews five women who had experienced the World War II effects in the U.S, two who were Caucasian and three who were African American. These five women, who were among the millions of women recruited into skilled male-oriented jobs during World War II, shared insight into how women were treated, viewed and mainly controlled. Along with the interviews are clips from U.S. government propaganda films, news reports from the media, March of Time films, and newspaper stories, all depicting how women are to take "the men’s" places to keep up with industrial production, while reassured that their duties were fulfilling the patriotic and feminine role. After the war the government and media had changed their message as women were to resume the role of the housewife, maid and mother to stay out of the way of returning soldiers. Thus the patriotic and feminine role was nothing but a mystified tactic the government used to maintain the American economic structure during the world war period. It is the contention of this paper to explore how several groups of women were treated as mindless individuals that could be controlled and disposed of through the government arranging social institutions, media manipulation and propaganda, and assumptions behind women’s tendencies which forced “Rosie the Riveter” to become a male dominated concept.
During America’s involvement in World War Two, which spanned from 1941 until 1945, many men went off to fight overseas. This left a gap in the defense plants that built wartime materials, such as tanks and other machines for battle. As a result, women began to enter the workforce at astonishing rates, filling the roles left behind by the men. As stated by Cynthia Harrison, “By March of [1944], almost one-third of all women over the age of fourteen were in the labor force, and the numbers of women in industry had increased almost 500 percent. For the first time in history, women were in the exact same place as their male counterparts had been, even working the same jobs. The women were not dependent upon men, as the men were overseas and far from influence upon their wives.