Recruiting Rosie the Riveter
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During the
During the 1930’s, Americans watched with morbid fascination
the rise of Adolf Hitler. By 1941, war was raging in Europe, and
America was sending aid to the British and Soviets, through the
Lend Lease program. Industry, stagnant during the Great Depression,
was revitalized; to fill the openings in many areas, women, condemned
for working in the prior decade, were already being recruited
into the factory. In the Chippewa Valley, women were not yet being
called to work, but calls for women to aid in relief efforts were
listed in area newspapers as early as January 1941.
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Recruiting
Women?
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Chippewa Herald-Tribune |
With the December 7,
1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States declared
war on the Axis’ powers of Japan, Hitler’s Germany,
and Italy, and manufacturing took on a new intensity and imperative.
As more and more men were called to active duty overseas, labor
shortages became critical. To fill the thousands of wartime positions
in munitions factories, shipyards and airplane manufacturing plants,
as well as the vacancies in utilities, transportation and agriculture,
would require more than even the available pool of single and
working-class women. The United States faced two serious problems:
1) they needed to overcome the prejudice against hiring women
to fill traditionally “male” positions, and 2) they
needed to persuade married, middle-class women to enter
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Reproduced
courtsey of
the Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov
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the labor force - and
they needed to do it fast. There existed a wide spread resistance
to hiring any woman in such essential industries as aircraft,
shipping and steel. While the majority of war workers would be
drawn from the ranks of the working class, the government knew
it would also need to recruit married women, who for decades had
been discouraged from working outside the home. The “cult
of true womanhood” demanded her undivided attention be directed
towards her husband, her children and her home. It had been only
a short few years since married women who worked outside the home
had been called “thieving parasites.” 29
Corporate policies still in place from the Depression era restricted
the hiring of married women. How would the government accomplish
such a radical reversal of social philosophy? How best to communicate
the urgency of the need and exploit that great untapped labor
reserve?
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