Women have historically been pushed out of the labor market, regardless of their low cost to employers. As Ruth Milkman cites in her work “How Women Were Purged from the War Plants,” the reconstruction of the pre-World War II workforce after the war was the most severe instance of sexual division of labor. According to Milkman, women workers were excluded from heavy industries because there was minimal resistance from the union or women workers and because the Fordist revolution changed the way management appropriated labor. The narrators of “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter,” however, would more likely agree with Ngai’s ideas about labor policy in Impossible Subjects. According to Ngai and “The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter,” …show more content…
These “heavy” production jobs were streamlined and organized into mass assembly line production. With this new manufacturing structure the pay structure for employees also changed, so it no longer was advantageous to hire women as cheaper labor. Although during this transformation, the justification of automotive work being too heavy and women not being physically capable became invalid, employers still did not favor female workers. Ngai would argue that these employers did not favor female employees during this time because they wished to create a workforce of desired composition. Some of the ways they did this was by making job specifications so specific that women could not fill the credentials, even if they were already in working those exact jobs during the war. The Fordist Revolution laid the foundation for automobile manufacturing to “develop as a high-wage, capital intensive industry; thus, employers had little incentive to substitute female labor for its more expensive male equivalent,” and therefore, the greatest convenience for hiring female labor was abolished. Additionally, it was only during World War II, when male workers went over seas to fight that these employers were pressured to hire black and female workers. Women workers were easily replaceable and what employers ultimately wanted was a strong male
In 1943, most women worked as teachers, nurses, or done some sort of domestic labor. Their opportunities were nowhere near as vast as the men’s. This caused the women to feel left out or unequal. Women fought for more equal opportunities as well as equal treatment. This along with their sense of patriotism is what led them to work in these factories. They wanted to be viewed as equal counterparts and have the same opportunities as men during this time. Not as many opportunities were open to the women so they jumped at the chance to widen them when the idea of working in the factories came up. This also paired with their sense of patriotism, making their determination to work stronger. The women knew the men were off fighting for their freedom so this would give them a chance to contribute to the cause as well as help war production. This challenged the views of the workplace as well as the beliefs of where women belonged in the workplace. Numerous men...
Siebel, Julia M., Remembering the Riveter. Organization of American Historians. OAH Newsletter, p. 15. 2005
“I think a lot of women said, “Screw that noise”. ‘Cause they had a taste of freedom, they had a taste of making their own money, a taste of spending their own money, making their own decisions. I think the beginning of the women's movement had its seeds right there in World War Two."
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
The American Yawp states, “And for all of the postwar celebration of Rosie the Riveter, after the war ended the men returned and most women voluntarily left the work force or lost their jobs” (3). The resemblance and/or uprising that the idea of women taking on jobs liken-to women of the Soviet Union. The Role of Women in the Soviet Union states,
Many factories became short-handed and had to hire women to cover the jobs. The factories were very dangerous and unhealthy, and the women were only getting paid half the wages of men. The women were not unionized because the Labor Union said that they had to hire many women to replace one man and that the skilled tasks were broken in to several less skilled tasks. They had no protection, so their lungs and skin were exposed to dangerous chemicals. Many women worked in munitions factories, where they worked with sulphur.
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, and what caused them to leave?
In the 1890s, female factory workers were seen as a serious economic and social threat. Because women generally worked at the bottom of the pay scale, the theory was that they depressed the overall pay scale for all workers (Kessler-Harris 98). Many solutions were suggested at this time that all revolved around the idea of these women getting marriedóthe idea being that a married woman would not work for wages. Although this idea seems ludicrous from a modern perspective, it should be noted that t...
In the 1800's the construction of cotton mills brought about a new phenomenon in American labor. The owners needed a new source of labor to tend these water powered machines and looked to women. Since these jobs didn't need strength or special skills th...
Until the last hundred years or so in the United States, married women had to rely on their husbands for money, shelter, and food because they were not allowed to work. Though there were probably many men who believed their wives could “stand up to the challenge”, some men would not let their wives be independent, believing them to be of the “inferior” sex, which made them too incompetent to work “un-feminine” jobs. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, feminist writers began to vent their frustration at men’s condescension and sexist beliefs. Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” and Zora Neale Hurson’s “Sweat” both use dialogue to express how women are capable of and used to working hard, thinking originally, being independent
Rosie the riveter was the face of recruiting women into the Armed Forces during WWII. The increasing demand for soldiers was not being filled fast enough by just males. As a result, between the years 1940 and 1945, the percentage of female service members increased from 27% to 37%. Even on the civilian side of things, the ratio of married working women outside of their homes increased to one out of every four. The population of women that did not join the war was prompted by Rosie the Riveter’s iconic image to work in one of the many munitions industries throughout the US. In 1943, not only had the female population contributed exponential numbers in support of the war; but women had begun to dominate. Reports indicate that more than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry; this made up more than half of the total workforce. Prior to this moment in history, women’s involvement in the aircraft industry was merely one percent.
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.
"Women Go to Work." American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, Et Al. Vol. 3: 1920-1929. Detroit: Gale, 2001. U.S. History in Context. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
During the Great War and the huge amount of men that were deployed created the need to employ women in hospitals, factories, and offices. When the war ended the women would return home or do more traditional jobs such as teaching or shop work. “Also in the 1920s the number of women working raised by fifty percent.” They usually didn’t work if they were married because they were still sticking to the role of being stay at home moms while the husband worked and took care of the family financially. But among the single women there was a huge increase in employment. “Women were still not getting payed near as equally as men and were expected to quit their jobs if they married or pregnant.” Although women were still not getting payed as equally it was still a huge change for the women's
“Limited labor-force opportunities, protective labor legislation and virtual exclusion from labor unions institutionalized women's isolation from the mainstream of labor” and confirmed the assumed role of women in society (Kessler-Harris, 105). Although it was acknowledged by many that the competition between men and women in the workplace was unhelpful for all workers and unreasonable, noneconomic arguments won out during the first two decades of the twentieth century which released some stress from women, but concurrently established their place in jobs most prone to exploitation.