Women in the Workforce: From World War II To Present

The changing roles of women throughout history has been drastic, and none more so than the period during and after World War II. The irrevocable changes that occurred once the war started and women went to work were unprecedented.

Many people have never considered what women were doing in WWII when their husbands left to fight. Their lives weren’t easy or normal during the war. Women had to work just as hard as men, sometimes even more so. In this essay, I will discuss the position of American women before World War II, during the war, and at the end of the war.

During the year 1942, most of the world was occupied with World War II; for the US, it was a period of hardship, unity, sacrifice, and pain. Men were selected to go fight while women were encouraged with the “Rosie the Riveter” poster to work in areas they were not familiar with. About six million women were motivated from it and worked the jobs men usually took and jobs that contributed to helping the men who were fighting; however, women were still responsible for their daily house work.

Women in America have faced gender suppression for centuries. From issues such as not being able to vote, to equal wage rights, feminists and suffragettes have fought for their place in society. During World War II, women began to shape the world around them by taking jobs in large numbers, as men had to leave their jobs to enlist. This was supported through one of America’s cultural icons, Rosie the Riveter, who represented a strong, working woman. However, once the men returned at war’s end, women were fired from their jobs. While women were praised for their work, they also changed the workplace itself, helping the United States transition out of an industrial economy. Harsh factories were given a feminine, personal touch, and the women began to break out of their dull housewife lives--until the war ended. Although World War II caused only a temporary rise in women’s employment, women changed company policies and took jobs normally reserved for men, challenging their own role as subservient housewives and permanently improving employment in the businesses that they worked.

The war expanded the horizons of American women. The war brought a tremendous shortage of labor. Not only was there great demand for labor to build up the war machines necessary to fight, but also the men were leaving employment for military service in huge numbers. As a result society asked women to fill the jobs, and they rushed to take them. ”Women in 1944 made up more than one-third of the civilian labor force” (Foner). There was a new found image of women now know as “Rosie the Riveter” who was a strong welding worker who helped build machines for the war effort. Many women looked up to this campaign propaganda of Rosie and envisioned themselves similar to Rosie. When in fact that it was only typical for a few women out of many to be an actual welder. “In fact only about two million, or ten

World War II was the catalyst that changed the opportunities available to women and eventually the way they were regarded as a viable workforce. Suddenly women throughout the United States were pushing themselves to their limits to support the war effort. Women were fulfilling jobs and responsibilities that many previously believed to be impossible for their gender. Opportunities were opened in steel plants, ammunition factories, and even the United States military. As the war progressed the number of male workers declined dramatically. Society had no choice but to turn to the mothers, sisters, and daughters of our nation for help. The results for each woman varied

This investigation will explore the question: To what extent did women working factory jobs change feminine roles in society? The years from 1939 to 1945 will be the focus of this investigation, to allow for an analysis of women’s employment before and during the war.

Before World War II, women were typically seen as wives and mothers. A majority of jobs were saved for men and it was very uncommon for a woman to have a job that was outside of the house, especially if they were married. The need to prepare for war was so strong that “political and social leaders agreed that both women and men have to change their perceptions of gender roles-at least as long as there was a national emergency” (“Changing Images” 1). America’s view on the woman was about to entirely change. Women were about to change the typical stereotype and prove to men that they could do anything they could.

Women Work During World War II Many people might say women can't do a man’s job. Women are known as ‘housewives’ who are only supposed to do work around the house such as cleaning , taking care of their kids, and husband (“Women during World War II” 11). They will never be good enough to do the dirty work. They are wrong because women are independent enough to take care of their family and work outside of the house.

Before the war, women’s roles in the household were to simply raise the children and maintain the home, or to take these things off of the plates of their busy husbands hands, but in this era of wartime production women who were married, unmarried, or married and had children went to work. Some 14 million women went to work building landing vehicles, ships, planes anything needed so that their boys were properly supplied on the front lines. With this shift from wife and mom to worker, women began to overcome much of the discrimination they previously battled in the work place, like being paid fewer wage than men. This movement was fueled by a massive propaganda campaign that started to change how women thought it meant to be a woman. At the peak of the industrial boom caused by World War II, 40 percent of all women worked for wages in the US and out of the entire workforce, 36 percent were women. Being a women in this period no longer required sitting at home all day cleaning the house while the children were at school and the opportunity to make on honest days wage became increasingly appealing to many housewives. Women, now accustomed to being treated this way, saw this as a step forward in society for them. Sadly, this way of life most women who joined the work force was short lived.

As more men entered the armed forces, women needed to replace them. By the war's end, hundreds of thousands of women had entered the workforce, many of them in traditionally masculine occupations such as engineering, munitions, transport, business, and eventually even the military. The war produced a leap in women's employment from twenty-six percent in the workforce in 1914 to thirty-six percent by 1918. One million women worked in munition industries, forty-thousand served as nurses, and twenty-thousand joined the Women's Land Army as agricultural workers (Marwick, 1977). For the young and the middle-class, work outside their homes was indeed a new experience. On the other hand, working-class women were used to paid work, but the type of work was new. Many left low-skill, low-wage jobs, especially in domestic service, for better paying skilled labor in factories and workshops (Kent, 1993).

Throughout the twentieth century, both World War I and World War II significantly impacted American society in several ways. From 1917 to 1918, the United States’ involvement in World War I began an increase in the number of women in the workplace that would steadily continue throughout much of the twentieth century. The United States once again played a major role in World War II from 1941 to 1945, and this war is actually seen as a turning point for women in the workplace. During the two world wars, women workers were impacted by discrimination, the danger of the work they completed, and the portrayal of women in propaganda during both world wars, and yet the different time periods of the two world wars led to differences in how women

The women did what they could to add the soldiers fighting the war. The iconic imagine of Rosie the riveter was a great example of what happened during that time. Women in the work force proved to everyone that they were capable of doing the jobs that many thought only men could do. This event helped pave the way for women in the work force. Although women were not treated equal to men after the war, it was a step in the right direction.

During World War II American women entered the work force in unprecedented numbers, as the growth of men enlisting hit a high hurt the economy which left huge gaping holes in our labor force. Between 1940 and 1945, the percentage of females working in our workforce increased dramatically from about its usual 27 percent to nearly 37 percent. By 1945 one out of every four married women worked outside the home. Rosie the Riveter which is the star of the government campaign aimed to recruit women into the workforce for the munitions industry. She became the most iconic image of the working women during the war.

On December 7, 1941 the United States entered World War 2 after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The US entering the war led to a draft for men between the ages of 18 and 45. The country soon realized that the draft caused a shortage of men in the workforce and this meant that women would now have to do traditionally men's jobs. Some of these jobs include working as mechanics, engineers, tank drivers, air raid wardens, driving fire engines, plumbers, and ambulance drivers. Although these task were nothing like what women had done before most felt like it was their duty to the country to fill in for the men.