American women in three ways, were going to talk about women at home. Women at work and women at war. Were just going to kind of organize our ideas this way, and were going to look at a lot of the propaganda, weve been talking about propaganda this semester, well get a chance to talk about everybody found that video okay, the all right, its a good one on women at work during world war ii. You can find it on the National Archives website. Well talk about that in this portion, well talk about that in these different parts of american women during world war ii, were just hitting the survey of this, theres so much we could talk about throughout the entire semester. And we do all of u. S. And world war ii, except we cant do all of it, we do our bits and pieces. Weve already talked about some of these things. Some of it will be familiar, especially when we get to the women at work part. Be sure to stop me if you have any questions and well do our thi thing. Sew women at home. When we think about this, one of the biggest things i want you to do today is think about this reality for the home front, which is mainly what were talking about today. The reality of what life meant for women in the war. One of the first things that we often think about is all the men going away to war, the men are going off, that means, whos left behind. The women, right . So a lot of the women are married, weve talked about, there are all sorts of quick can i weddings going on, but people who have been married for a while as well this idea of how do you get by if youre a household with a husband and a wife in this time period, its a partnership, and each has their role, theyre much more defined roles during world war ii than they are today. How are you going to do your job as the wife and often the mother and the job of the husband, how do you do this . So this is a popular book, this came out in 1942, so your husbands gone to war. And this idea of, what do you do . How do you get through it, you can see from the cover here tackling male chores, right, because the chores were defined by male and female, whos going to do which job. Any single woman, any widow, any woman like that does everything. You guys, if you live on your own, you do your own thing, put your own light bulbs in, make your own repairs. This book gives some guidance to help women know how to do those little maintenance jobs that they needed to. This is my favorite part. The wolves in the friends clothing. This idea of, we have wolves that was the phrase of the day about you know what that means, right . What a wolf . They pretend to be helpful. But really, theyre not quite as nice as they seem. How do you distinguish between the wolf and the real friend. And then this part in the upper right corner is something thats porn. Women had a lot of responsibility, not just to do their work and things like this. But this is the lost art of letter writing. This idea that women were responsible for keeping up the moral of men. This is going to be a theme were going to have through this entire section especially. Women are responsible for making men remember what theyre fighting for, making men feel confident, making men feel its okay for them to be away but theyre missed and they need to come home. So this lost art of letter writing, ethel gorman writes this whole chapter about how to write your letters to your men. Theres articles in womens magazines, mainstream newspapers, all these editorials about how women should write their letters. What do you think you want to put in a letter, if youre writing to johnny whos away in europe fighting against the germans, what do you want to put in your letter as youre writing from home . What would you put in there . Dont worry about how things are going here, focus on getting the job done. Right, right. Dont worry about how things are, focus on getting the job done. Go do your thing, were good here. You have to realize they want you to write multiple letters a week. If you can write daily, thats best. Imagine your soldiers going to get mail every day and if theres nothing there, how depressing that is. Oh, i have to go fight my war and nobody at home cares about me. Thats the guilt, right . The pressure is to write every day, three days a week, four, five days a week at a minimum. You write that once. And then what do you write . What else do you do . We miss you. We miss you, please comb home, right . But you cant do too much of that, or it will make him too sad. A cheerful story, but focus on the war. Right, a fun story. A piece of advice that gorman puts in her book is make yourself interesting, so your letters are interesting, right . Do interesting things so your letters are interesting but dont be too interesting, because hell think youre having fun while hes at war. You have to find that war between being interesting and not being interesting. What if they dont have a sweetheart at home, are there women getting together to write letters to strangers . Yes, theres this whole campaign, it could be through the red cross or different organizations, where soldiers would give their names and women would write letters to strangers. You have romances that grow out of that. The idea of writing letters, talking about what gets at home. What if your roof gets a leak . Should you write johnny about that . Its this balance between maybe you wait until the leak is fixed and then you tell johnny, the roof had a leak, but we got it fixed. But you dont want to seem too efficient, right . If the roof leaks and the plumbing breaks, and all these things and you take care of it, why does johnny need toe come home, right . Its a lot of pressure on these women to write these letters in these specific ways, high volume, positive. You can say you miss him, but you cant be too blue, right . Youve got to find this balance of being responsible and him not needing to worry, but still needing him to come home, because its just youre not good at it. Right . You can get by, but hurry home. Its this balance and this pressure on women that gets put, again, you have whole books about it, but in different forms of media, about womens responsibilities to write these letters, and the men you know, i read a lot of these letters that are coming back, we dont have as many letters of the women going overseas. These levers that the women wrote we dont see as many, because the men didnt keep them. The women kept the letters that the men wrote from overseas. We have more of those. We can figure out what the women were talking about by how the men respond to those letters. Thats one of the ways we can determine what went into those letters and you see a lot of anxiety from the men. Especially about the wolves. Theres a lot of ideas about the men who dont serve, who are not able to serve or have these different positions domestically, and theyre going to steal the women. Thats actually a campaign that the germans and japanese both use in leaflet campaigns, is the men back home are stealing your girl, dont you wish the war was over. And you could go home . This idea of the letter writing, this is an incredibly popular book in 1942 says a lot, women are working on this and goingforward, right . Other responsibilities that the women had. We talked a little bit about the rationing, were going to talk about it more in another week. But this idea of weve got all this rationing. Who is the United States sporns for feeding during the war . Pretty much everybody. Lets narrow that down a little. Thats good. Who are we responsible for feeding . Our allies, right . The allies . Were going to give some food to the russians, the british and all that entails. Who else do we need to feed . Our soldiers. The men and women who have gone abroad, were responsible for feeding them, the british arent going to pull out fish and chips for the soldiers that are out, we have to supply. Whos the third group were responsible for feeding . People were rescuing . Yes. Yes. The home front. The people back home need to eat as well. Weve got rationing so they can get all that manufacturing we talked about already. But then that reality of food and whos going to eat and who were responsible for feeding. So theres a lot of emphasis on women growing those Victory Gardens. And i have a slide of that. Grow those Victory Gardens. Theres a huge growth in the study of nutrition in this time period because you want to get as much nutrition in as little food as possible. And then this idea of, what are women going to do. You have to can that. Its one thing to grow a Victory Garden but if its done by the end of the summer, thats no good. This idea of canning, im plowed, im fighting famine by canning at home. Look, this is hard, but im doing it. I love this one with the little girl, well have lots to eat this winter, wont we, mother . Very cute. As we go through these, were going to see a lot of these posters. I want you to make sure you note the race of these women being portrayed. The appearance of them . These are pretty perfect that little girl is so cute, you could pinch her cheek, right . Whos being represented, which audience are these government sponsored posters trying to reach. Now, another thing thats used so women get used in a number of different ways, right . We have this pressure to try to get women to take action. But we also have the effort to use women as propaganda pieces to achieve other goals. What do you see in this image . What do you think of this . Sacrifice. Right, sacrifice. Is she a perky clean cut gal . No. Well, she might have used to have been. What is she now . Scared. Shes scared. Does she look very happy . No. The babys laughing, but the little girl is clinging to her not quite knowing whats going on. The woman looks sad and scared. I gave a man. Remember when we talked about the soviets and how the americans are like, you have to do more . We gave blood, you give money. Shes saying, i gave a man. My children dont have a father. Im alone and scared. Can you at least give 10 of your pay to buy a war bond . Thats the very least you can do. Look at the sacrifice my family has made. Women being used for guilt to make you feel this pressure to buy war bonds. Now, review, why do we need war bonds . What are they for . That paid for all our equipment and supplies that are going out. We need it, right . Because we talked about how expensive the war is, and war bonds are one way that we pay for it, its basically loaning money to the government so the government can afford the war. This is another way women are portrayed in these things. Information is important. And theres all sorts of campaigns out there, dont talk about whats in johnnys letters. Anybody can be listening. And this idea of wanted for murder. What does she look like . If she was in a movie, what character would she be . The femme fatale. Or the neighbor gossip. Because women just cant help themselves, right . Thats the impression thats given in so many of these images. And again i have about 20 of these we can look at. Women cant help themselves gossiping. But her gossip costs lives, maybe his life, right . This idea that she looks perfect, but her careless talk her thoughtlessness costs lives. This idea of women need to control themselves, to resist their natural urge to gossip. Women are used for sex. This idea of images of women as sexual. This is a whole famous series of prints that im sure you guys have seen before. You see shes a wac, shes in the military. This is mainstream, this is mainstream. This is a picture that came out of life magazine. This is a mainstream image of women as sexualized beings. You have to think about why were fighting. Were fighting so we can get home to the girl. Were fighting so we can get home and this is what all girls look like, apparently . This reality. So women are supposed to be sexual, theyre supposed to be pretty, theyre supposed to be sexual so the men will know what theyre fighting for. They cant be too sexual, right . Give you guys a minute to take a look at these. You like these . What do you think . What do you see in these images, how are women being portrayed in these i78ages . Theyre spreading disease. This one is one of my all time favorites. She may look clean, but theres a whole series of these images, these posters that are given to men at the different bases and overseas, whole classes on venerial disease. We want to give you posters like this to hang up, but dont touch. Because theyre probably diseased. So this idea of women as all these Different Things, women are mothers, women are raising the gardens and saving and feeding everyone and women are sacrificing, women are writing letters and being good for morale. Women are these sexual beings and women are also diseased. All these things, all at the same time. This idea of i just think this is right . And again, it can theres a whole series of these that are out there, and theyre promoted among all these men. So thats our women at home. Do you guys have questions about that or okay . Well, lets switch to our next topic here, this idea of women at work. We think of this a lot. When we think of women in world war ii, we often think of these working women. And this is the point of the class, the section of the course. My favorite thing is to be a myth buster. Thats what we do. Thats what historians do, thats our job this section were going to bust some myths, im sorry. But we are when we think of women working in world war ii, one of the biggest things that is often talked about is the idea that women go to work, okay, all the women go to work do you guys remember your u. S. History class, your survey . What did you learn about women working . Did they work before world war ii . No. Not according to my survey class, no. What about in the factories at the turn of the century, what about those imgrant women about. Some, but it wasnt as widespread and it wasnt mothers or okay. So all those factories that came out through the Industrial Revolution and all those children, that child labor. Did women not work in those factories . I think young women. Lots of young single women. Lots of immigrant women. What about women of chore, did they work . You think so . Yeah. A lot of them were teachers. Women of color didnt get a lot of teaching jobs. Coming up to here we do. Coming out of the progressive era, we get more women of color taking middle class jobs. Youve always had working class women, immigrant women, women of color, unmarried women that have always worked. Which women are we really talking about when we say women began to work during world war ii. Middle class white women. This expansion into this area that people didnt work before. And then a second group tied in there is mothers. More mothers are going to work than before world war ii. Its a shift of women working to that expansion of middle class white women. Thats what we often see portrayed in these posters. Look at these women. First of all, their teeth are perfect, which did not happen in the 1940s. They all look like movie stars. They all have their eyebrows just right, their hair just right. This is not what most people ever look like, let alone in the 40s. But this idea of who the target is whos the target for the working, because this is the group that we have in excess, that we can target to get to work. So thats an important distinction i want to make sure we understand. Which women were talking about when we say the workforce expanded to women, its a specific group of women that are going to be expanding it. One area that often doesnt get talked about in women working in world war ii, is women in agriculture. This idea of women in agriculture. Its important to realize we have over 6 million agricultural laborers and farmers that leave the land during world war ii. Over 6 Million People who had been working the land, leave it during world war ii. These are often going to be men who are going to work in the factories, because theyre better paid. These are going to be men who are being drafted or enlisting. The shortage of laborers gets so bad during the war that by the middle and late 1942 becomes a draft deferred position. You dont have to go over to the war, your job is war critical. If you leave that job you may be eligible for the draft. If youre in that position youre draft deferred. So agricultural farmers are draft deferred. That doesnt mean you cant go work in a factory. By late in the war, there are limits on that, you have to get permission to do that. At the same moment were expanding the agricultural needs, were feeding people at home, americans abroad and were feeding all of our allies. Helping feed our allies. At the same time were doing that, the laborers are shrinking, theres a huge push to get american women involved in this. And we had seen this before, in world war i there was the Womens Land Army of america, that was around. We expand that in world war ii. There was a Womens Land Army in great britain, and we model a lot of what goes on in the United States after that. Theres this huge push to get american women as part of this. There were other organizations of the bu krf ero program. Have you read about that . What was the bacero program . It was an agreement between the United States and mexico to allow laborers to come to the United States and work. And this program goes from 1942 to 1951. This is a huge program well talk about in another class. They try that. To expand the number of laborers, they also go to convicts, right . Prison labor, which had been used some in the past, but gets expanded. They also use pows, we had pows here in texas and some in oklahoma and in different regions of the country. Where you would have german and italian pows that would come to the United States and put them in the farms. Let them be laborers. So youve got all these dink groups, and then this huge push, lets get more women. Lets get more women to do this. Some basic numbers for you. We end up with Something Like 3 1 2 million women working in the agricultural field. 3. 5 million. Which is a much bigger number than you think of. You think of world war ii, we think of rosie the riveter or the women pilots because youre here and have me as a professor. 3. 5 million women are recruited. Theres some bias against them in the beginning, you can read a lot of documents about the idea of women arent going to be able to do the job, we cant trust them. This idea of urban women especially, nobody wants a city girl to come work on their farm, theyre going to break their heel and not be able to do it. Very quickly the women prove themselves. Theyre able to do the work that needs to be done, and make a real difference. Some basic numbers, 1940, women made up 8 of all farm workers. By 1945 it was 23 . So women went from 8 in agriculture to 23 in agriculture, just that quickly. And again, this is all going to shrink back down after the war, because we arent growing as much after the war. Thats a significant amount, 3. 5 million women working on farms. Theres a new costume idea for you for halloween. Dress up like a farm worker. Womens land army. Everybody does rosie. Now this idea of women in labor so this is you cant talk about women at work, without talking about this. Who do you see here . Rosie the riveter. This is the part another part of the class im going to bust some myths. Working in the army it started off with it was supposed to be somebody playing hitler, talking about how american women were spend more on personal stuff than the u. S. Military did, for their own supplies . While german women were put to work as baby producers, basically. I was curious as to how at the time the u. S. Thought about its women becoming part of the major workforce. And i dont think that was really discussed in the video, how was how were american women treated by american men who were still working in the factories at that time. How are the women that are working in the factories treated by the men, how do they feel about them coming into the war. I have some numbers for you. To give you some big ideas. The female labor force grows by 6. 5 million during this period. During world war ii. A shift from 25 of american women working in 1940 to 37 of all american women working in 1944. This is going to be a huge shift. To answer your question of how were they seen . Women did work, but women are dominating a lot of these factories especially. The reality is, a lot of the men were put in charge. Theyre put in supervisory roles if they had been working in the factory and had experience theyre going to be put into these roles. Youre going to have different interpretations, some will be happy to have them as laborers, some believe they cant do the job. Some will be sexist or harassers or whatever. It depended on the time and place, how they were doing it we couldnt have done the work we did during the war without them, just by sheer numbers. As you brought up the film, that hidden army i want to give you guys a chance to talk about that. This is a propaganda film that was done in 1944, before the war is over, how does it begin . Hit better in a Hannibal Lecter like cell saying, i shun the have underestimated those american women. Its a strange set upof a prison guard coming down and hitler writing a memoir. Like he wrote mein komf in a cell, hes going to write his memoir in a cell. One of the chapters is the hidden army, and its women. We watched the documentary memphis spell as a propaganda film. Try to put this hidden army film into that context of propaganda, what pieces did you see that looked familiar or were a little different or focused on women a little more . I thought it was interesting they did the interviews with women, why are you here . I was like, some of that seems very fake. Y, they interview different women saying, why are you here in the factory, why are you doing what youre doing . This isnt a random, lets walk up on the street to a random worker and say this. You see that guilt of not working, the girl that wakes up in the morning and goes back to sleep, because of that people are dying. Thats similar in the memphis spell when they show more of the dead people. You get more of that attitude with this film. There was an entire sequence of women getting a telegram saying oh, your husband, son is dead. She flings herself on the bed. Theres no subtlety to this film. Its definitely a propaganda piece. Everyone watching it knows its a propaganda piece. You have to wonder, were they as cynic cynical then . The slacker who shuts her alarm off and goes back to sleep and johnny dies because she didnt go to the factory. The telegram saying, you lost your person. The reality is, people are dying, theyre receiving those telegrams, we talked about this in the past, when we talked about that manufacturing chapter of david kennedys book, this idea that american stuff our tanks, our planes, all those things helped to win the war. So there really is a direct core wlags between people not going to the factory and people not having the supplies they need, right . Very dramatic. Were there other points to that film you noticed or wanted to make sure we talked about . Its very short, its seven minutes. Its kind of fun. Its one of those where you dont want to giggle, but its so over the top. We talked a little bit about when we talked about manufacturing, the people were having strikes and when we talked i think last week about censorship, earlier in the war, the War Department censored photos, they wouldnt show men dead on the beach and things like that, it was too hard. It was too hard, but by 1944 theyre letting those images out, theyre showing more of those images, showing more of this drama of the families being affected. Theyre showing more of the violence occurring to the soldiers, why were they doing that . Because people were starting to slack, they thought they won the war already, why continue to go to the factories and work . Exactly. We werent being bombed. With some exceptions in the northwest and, of course, pearl harbor, most americans werent being impacted as they were in england or in france or other places. So this idea of i dont want to go to work today, whats the consequence, who cares . Theres another moment in the film where they show bombed out cities, im not sure if thats in italy or britain or anything like that, but it says, all right, if you dont go to work and do this thing we could get bombed here, please take this seriously. We looked at some of those images of that idea of, we want to stop the fighting over there. We want to stop it in europe, in the pacific, before it am coulds here. Because were next thats the goal, so go to the factory. Go to the factory and get the job done. So this idea of women working was important. Just to kind of drive home the point of which women are working, and how it changed. Before the war, only 13. 9 of american women who were married are working. And then that number goes up to almost 24 during the war. So its still a pretty small number, isnt it . If you think about it. Now, thats a little warped by the fact that you have so many marriages during world war ii, those kind of quickie marriages that occur, weve known each other for two weeks, but youre about to go overseas, so lets get married. Its important to realize the divorce rate between 1945 and 1952 is astronomical. Its the highest in american history, those seven years, everybody comes back from war, and its like, oooh, i dont really know you, maybe this isnt a good idea, right . That idea of married women working. Weve got this image, we can do it imaround, which is so popular and so important. And the idea of rosie the riveter comes from a song. This is a 1942 song, its incredibly popular, and well s see. Im going to try to play it for you. Let me see if i can make this work, because its so fun. Rosies got a boyfriend Charlie Charlie hes a marine rosie is protecting charlie working overtime on the riveting machine when they gave her a production she was as proud as a girl could be theres something true about the red white and blue about rosie the riveter all right, well, its a longer song than that, but well stop there. Wasnt that fun . Its going to be stuck in your head all day. And its going to be my fault. And thats okay. I know, its my fault, im sorry, thats my job, to get into your brains. So this is an incredibly popular song, it gets covered by everybody. It gets covered by everybody. The four havivagabonds in 1942 just so popular. This idea of rosie the riveter, theres also wendy the welder. Theres another all of that, this idea of going and working in the factory, right . So weve got this image. And this is the myth busting portion of the class. This idea of rosie the rivet riveter im sorry, but this woman was not called rosie the riveter until the 1980s. She was a poster created by Gerald Miller for westinghouse corporations factories that hung up in their factories for two weeks in 1943 and thats it. This was not a poster that inspired all of america, this was not an image that made people sit up and go to work. You can still love her, you can still dress up like her for halloween. She is definitely a worker. It definitely fits, its not dishonest to call her rosie. Look at the image from the cover. Very similar, and well have images of real rosies. But she wasnt called that during the war. This is rosie the riveter. You recognize Norman Rockwell of his own paintings of himself . This is Mary Doyle Keith, she was 19 years old, she was his neighbor. He was a pretty broke artist at the time. He paid her 5 to come to his studio and he had a photographer take pictures of her in different poses. He liked to work off of photographs instead of live subjects. Then they had her come back a week later and put on a blue shirt and penny loafers so he could work off of that photo. She got five dollars for each session. She got 10 to be rosie the riveter. He called her afterwards and apologized for making her look so hefty. Shes a big girl, and Mary Doyle Keith is a slender 19yearold he said, i want you to know, im sorry about that, and she was okay. I mean, obviously the thing went very popular. But this is rosie. You can see her lunch box says rosie on it, the song had come out and was popular, and he did this painting and dubbed her rosie the riveter. The this is another i like trivia for you. To see how this was inspired. Michelange michelangelo, isaiah has dropped his sandwich, i think. This idea. How often does rockwell do this . I dont know enough rockwell history, but i love how this similarity between the two, its obviously what he did. And very popular. So this is the image is that gets taken all over the country. This is the image that gets turned into posters. This is the image that people have hanging up and think about as rosie the riveter. Not our we can do it girl, as much as we love her, and you can still love her, but shes a creation. We talk about that a lot in here, the idea that people use the past for Different Things. And in the 1980s, they used that image to inspire women and called her rosie. But again, we bust myths in here. This is rosie. Representing all those women. She the real rosie never actually riveted anything. She was a telephone operator, she never riveted anything. But she posed and we have this terrific image with her lunch box. Just one more image, this is her in 2015, a copy of it. I think shes great. She just was very nice. A very nice happy lady. So weve got that. This idea of promotion of women working, weve talked about the fact that the federal government had all of these different commissions, all of these different boards to try to help organize the economy, control the economy. This idea of women doing different jobs. And this is one of my favorite posters. Its not seen quite as often. Its drawn in a different style than some of the others. This idea of look at all of these different jobs women are doing. We often think of rosie the riveters, wendy the welder, people working in the Naval Shipyards building the ships, youll note, this one has a waitress on there. And theres whole series of advertisements saying being a waitress is a war job. Somebody needs to feet the workers. Somebody needs to feet the people who are doing these other jobs. This type of work is just as important. We just need you to work. You dont have to be a mechanic. You dont have to weld. But work. And i wanted to point out too in this one, you see the one here in the middle has gray hair. So this is another target is, women in their 40s and 50s to help them get into the workforce, doing these different jobs. You can roll bandages, but we really need more people in the factories or more people doing these different jobs. And we talked about the fact that women are working when theyre married and mothers, who is going to care for the children when youre working . Grandmothers. Grandmothers, right . Theres a huge push, Eleanor Roosevelt, he advocates for different groups. Eleanor roosevelt, one of the things she advocates is this idea of governmentsupported childcare. This idea of childcare if you want women to work and to be a part of this war effort, then youve got to have somebody watching their children. And we know childcare is a problem for families today, right . Its not just a womens problem. Its a family problem. Affordable childcare is a problem, right . In the 1940s its even bigger problem because there was less infrastructure for childcare. Women, once you had children, you dont work, you take care of the kids. And workingclass women, immigrant women, and women of color always did and found ways. But Eleanor Roosevelt says, lets have childcare. There are facilities set up in the country but theyre in such small numbers that its completely inadequate. The people that are going to watch the children are going to be family, right . Grandmothers or this idea of support within the community. So that gets promoted as a war job, right . If you work as a childcare giver, you are enabling someone else to go and work in the facto factory. If you have arthritis and cant rivet, maybe you could feed a baby a bottle and do your part. This idea of all these jobs are important, all of these jobs help with the war effort and make a difference to the whole thing. All right. We often think of rosie the riveter as, you know, the epitome of women working during the war. But the reality is, more women typed than anything else. And when we get to the women at war, were not going to highlight that. But i want to sneak it in now. Thats one of the biggest things that women do in the military as well. You have the civil servicewomen working for different parts of the government but then women in the military too. There are no computers, right . And everyone has orders. And theyre all in quadrupled. Everything is typed. One of my favorite resources is when i find transcripts of phone calls. Every government official, depending on your level, right, would have stenographer that would listen in, right . And take shorthand, the ultimate secret language. Take shorthand of the phone conversation and type out the phone conversation. In the National Archives, we have transcripts of phone calls between generals, between important people making business decisions, right, we have transcripts of all of those phone calls. Theyre hard to find. Because theyre not labeled that way. You have to look through a lot of boxes. But somebody typed those. And thats going to be women that are typing those and these are on this one one of the things about a lot of these posters is theyre sponsored by different companies. Weve talked about that before, i think, the idea that they want to promote their company by sponsoring the bonds or whatever. And so Royal Typewriter Company sponsors this type of ad. You serve your country by doing it by typing. Wouldnt you rather have a royal typewriter than any other . Its a quiet plug for their own company but supporting the war effort. This is another push, right . This idea of, you know shes holding his letters and being all sad and lonely, crying. Do you see the tears. Isnt that sad . But her lipstick is perfect. What is this essentially saying to this girl, or any lonely girl . Dont cry about it. Get it to work. Chin up. Dont be a baby. Go do something about it. This idea that you can make only you can bring him home. Only you can end this war by going to work. If youre going to sit home and sit around and cry, nothing is going to happen. You have to go to work. You have to get this job done. What else do we have here . Similar type of theme, right . The men would rather be doing this work. The men are probably better at you than you are, but somebodys got to do it. Do the job he left behind. Whats with the head wrap . We see that in the image of rosie the riveter. Why . Because women set their hair with pin curls you can set your hair in pin curls. Are you going to wear your hair in pin curls you dont want your hair getting caught in any of the equipment. Youve got to keep your hair up and this is the simplest way. You can put your hair up in pin curls, wrap it up, then you dont kill yourself wrapping it around a drill press and then you can go out and go dancing afterwards. So its killing those two birds with one stone. Again, i want to point out the image that we have here of this woman. Does he look like shes sweating working . Shes perfect. Shes perfect. Shes beautiful. She has her makeup on. Shes got are those fake lashes . Real lashes . I dont know. And, again, the perfect lipstick. So this is the image thats being left of these women, was these very perfect images. Now, we talk about this and we look at oall of these different images. This is a very serious effort. This is a group of women, some of them have hair nets instead of bandannas, but this is important work. These are the noses of bombers, right . Can you tell can you see that . Those are going to be on the nose of bombers. Its important. Theres going to be a man sitting in here. And if you dont do it right, he could die. This is important work. We have to get those numbers out there. Just to review, weve talked about this idea of the manufacturing. If you remember when we talked about fdr in 1942, he said 60,000 new airplanes, right . We had 9,000 airplanes before we got involved in the war. Were going to build 60,000 new airplanes in 1942 and 123,000 airplanes in 1943. Think about that reality. How are we going to do that . How is this possible that we spooled up so quickly in our factories and our manufacturing and that we reached those goals. We build 300 airplanes over the course of the war. Go from 9,000 to over 300,000 in the course of the war. Were supplying the soviets, the british and supplying ourselves. Were completely overwhelming the germans and japanese. Completely overwhelming them. Its because we have women working in these factories. Women working in these factories. I want to show you pictures of the real rosie the riveters. We have this one anything with lots of airplanes. This is another image of rosie the riveter. I want to make the point, even though most of the posters images that we see are targeting those middleclass white women and this idea that you can still be attractive and feminine if youre working in the factory, the reality is, youve got a lot of women of color who are going to be in these positions and doing these different jobs. I love this. This is one of my favorite ones, so much so i have it twice for you. I like this one because of the reflection on the plane. You can see her ring in the reflection. This idea of, shes still feminine. Shes got this beautiful ring. Look at her nails. I dont know if she knew she was going to be photographed the next day or she kept her nails that pretty because it made here feel feminine while shes doing this work. This idea of women doing this work while still being feminine, but the target in a lot of that advertisement isnt women of color, but you see a lot different women who are taking these jobs. Again, this is why i say we can still call the we can do it woman rosie. She looks like a lot of these women. The ideas of the bandanna to hold their hair up, doing these different types of jobs. The shoes is always of interest to me, the types of shoes. They wore penny loafers, little loafers, no work boots for this generation. Like this one too, what do you see up there in the corner of that . I guess ive got to what do you see here . Working together. The idea of men doing these different jobs. You can see the one on the right is a sailor. Thats the kind of place that we can do it poster would have hung. Just on the back wall of the factory kind of thing just to remind people while youre there. Youre not just here doing a job. It gets romanticized a lot. This idea of, youre building this plane and youre going to save a man and hes going to fly it and kill the germans or the japanese and were going to women the war and its going to be because you riveted that. Your rivet saved the world. But its also boring to do the same thing every day. Its dirty, loud, its mundane. Its how to find the balance between making people realize you have to keep coming to work. Its important for you to keep coming to work and getting through the boringness of doing the same thing every day. How to find that balance. How to find that balance. Just another one. These are ship fitters. My classes, i show the airplane pictures. But we built tens of thousands of ships during world war ii and these are women worksing in one of the shipyards. I like this perfect because its diverse. You have an asianamerican woman, an africanamerican woman, white women all working together. You have a guy in the back smiling. Nice guy, right . Im here too. Im here too. Right, right. But, you know, much of the workers are integrated. This isnt where the while the military was still integrated while the military was still segregated at this time, the workers were integrated. So i think thats important. Youve got all different types of women working. Look at the sweater and shirt. Youre going to get dirty. Youre going to get dirty. They have i. D. Badges with photo i. D. S. These are secure facilities. Youre going to need to have youre going to have these photo i. D. S, this idea of photo i. D. S. I like this one. Theres a limited series of color photographs during the war. Color film was fairly new and was fairly expensive. So this is a whole series of color photographs. Its like, theyre real . It adds another level of things. You think about all of the different jobs. This woman is painting on the plane, right . Shes painting the star on the plane. This is fabric. This is a fabric plane, probably a trainer. Artists had jobs, right . All sorts of different jobs. Not just, you know, the factory riveting. Why did it matter that women went to work . This is the willow run factory near detroit. Its in bellville, michigan, actually. This, of course, was fords factory that got transitioned into this bomber factory. This is huge. This is one of my favorite photographs. Can you see the person here sticking their head out . Just to give you a scale of the planes that were talking about. These are b24 liberators. Its the e model, obviously. This one factory at willow run builds over 9,000 of the 18,000 b24s that are built during world war ii. Think about the scale of that. They were building one every 63 minutes by 1944. One of those was coming off the Assembly Line every 63 minutes. Think about how complicated that machine is. This is a big fourengine plane and incredibly, incredibly important. And then they go off to war. And, again, weve talked about previously in this class, we talked about the scale of the stuff, right, the planes the ships, the tanks, the guns, the trucks, the jeeps, all these things and how we overwhelmed the enemy and this is one example of it. So when you think about, you know, women at work during the war and whether they really needed to do it, this is the result. And its not because theyre women, right . Its because theyre workers and they were able to do the jobs that needed to be done and make a real difference make a real difference in the war, right . Just some other quick statistics for you. Remember, were reaching our goals of feeding everyone, right . Both ourselves here at home, our soldiers abroad and our allies overseas. We built over 300,000 planes over the course of the war. 300,000 planes. Its going to be everything from trainers and b51s and all of them. 300,000 planes over the course of the war. Were also supplying 60 of our munitions, 40 of the whole worlds arms. Thats enemies and ours. Were giving 10 of the total soviet unions military needs. We gave the soviet union 350,000 trucks, right . 350,000 trucks. We gave them 956,000 miles of telephone cable. All those Little Things that you think maybe dont think of that we had to give them. And all doing this while our population is healthy and better fed than we had been in a generation. Because we had that study of nutrition, we had all the farming going on. So all those things had to come together. It really did make a difference. Again, we look at all of these images and this idea of it being kind of fun and, you know, some of it sexist and some of it kind of racist, but it all comes together, right, this idea of different people working, right . Theres a lot of discussion about about the jobs that women had before and after the war. And this idea of women working and what happens to women after. I want to make one final point of this idea of women at work, right . Everyone during world war ii is able to change their opportunities. The work that they do. You have women that are working at this level. Theyre working at this level during before the war. And men are working here. Well, as the men are able to move up into different positions, the women are able to move up into the positions the men were, right . And so after the war, as the men come back down in the types of positions and the pay of the positions that they have, the women are going to come back down too. Theyre always going to stay a notch below when it comes to pay, when it comes to opportunity, thats going to be the same for women of color, especially. Theyre going to be below white women on the pay scale. But theyre going to be higher than they were before. Women as domestic laborers drops by over 15 during world war ii. The idea of how many women were working as domestic laborers and thats going to be a lot of women of color, a lot of immigrant women who are going to be doing those jobs. After the war, theyre going to get bumped back down to which types of jobs they can have. So questions about women at work . In idea of women working. Well switch to our third topic here. And our third focus final and third focus today is going to be women at war. This idea of women at war. One of the biggest things i want you to walk away with today is the idea that we have between 350 and 400,000 women are going to serve in the American Armed forces during world war ii. It depends on who you count and who you dont. Between 350 and 400,000 people women that are serving in the American Armed forces. The thing i want you to remember about them is that they were all volunteers. We talk about the millions of men who served in the armed forces in world war ii. The vast majority of them were drafted. Many of them volunteered. But every woman veteran from the beginning of time in the United States to today, every woman veteran you meet is a volunteer. And i think thats a really important thing to remember about women in the military and women who are veterans, right . So in world war two, youve got that 350,000 to 400,000 women who are serving in world war ii. This is my Public Service announcement. Have you been to Arlington National cemetery . Have you seen this . Have any of you been there . This is the womens memorial. Women in military service for america. Its right at the doorstep when you pull up to the Arlington National cemetery. You can find it there. And it says womens memorial but its really a museum and an archive. They gather oral histories and documents of women in world war ii and its really just a terrific nonprofit organization. It was started by congress. Unfortunately not funded. Of course. So it gets a lot of donations and things like that. But its a really terrific organization. Its the only place in the country thats just for women. Just for Women Veterans recognizing them. I think thats important and kind of a Public Service announcement for you there. So one of the first groups that we think of when we think of women serving in the military is of course nurses. This is a fairly idealized promotion, right . Very pure, very clean. Who is putting the hat on her . Uncle sam. Uncle sam. We dont even need to know. This is an attractive young woman, very white. Perfect makeup. All of this. Going to be very intelligent. Uncle sam saying, we need you. Become a nurse, your country needs you. There were women doctors as well, there was a very small group of women doctors as well. But all in all, we get about 74,000 women who serve in the army and Navy Nurse Corps during world war ii. So this is a lot. We had only 7,000 active duty army and navy nurses before pearl harbor. A huge increase. And, again, people still got sick in the United States. People still got sick on the home front. So finding that balance of adding all of these additional nurses was important. I would like to contrast this image of the nurse, you know, being anointed there by uncle sam with this reality of what it meant to be a nurse in world war ii. These are a group of u. S. Army nurses that landed at normandy on dday plus four. Weve talked about the war in europe. We talked about dday. A lot of men were being injured, of course. They would be taken out to the boats, to the ships that were waiting where navy nurses would be waiting for them. But army nurses are landing on the beaches at normandy, dday plus four and the beaches have been improved a little bit. But its still very much a war zone. Throughout the war, nurses get closer and closer to the front lines, right, and always in the thick of it, because thats where the injured soldiers are. Theres a group of american women that are captured as p. O. W. S. Were going to cover the war in the pacific. And when the philippines falls in 1942 both manila, you have a group of american women, navy and army nurses that are there captured by the japanese. Theyre held as p. O. W. S for 37 months. This is a couple of them that survived eating chocolate. You can see how thin they are, especially the woman on the left. How thin they are. Starvation, rations, all of that. When were talking about, you know, who is in combat, who is not, that line gets blurred, especially when it comes to the nurses because theyre so close. Who is captured, who is not. What happens to women as p. O. W. S, what happens to men as p. O. W. S. So i think thats important to recognize these nurses of course. Women serve in a number of different parts of the military. This one, could you get more girl next door . Shes so perfect. But shes a good soldier. When you think of soldier, do you think of this . Is that the image that pops into your head . Not typically. Not typically. This idea of women serving in the military, women being soldiers is something that you have to get the public used to. You have to get the public used to. And so you have a lot of these images. There was a Huge Campaign against these women. Being in the military was a mans job, so if a woman wanted to serve in the military, they must just want to be around men in a sexual way or they must be lesbians and want to be a man, right . Thats the two choices. So theres a lot of pushback against the idea of women serving in the military that you would be unsavy type of people in the military. One of the biggest efforts especially the w. A. C. , one of their biggest pushes is to convince parents that this was a good idea for their daughters to serve in the military. Parents were the ones who were pushing back a lot. Lisa meyer has a good book on women in the army and the campaign against them. So you have all these different branches in the military that have women in them. Theres a fierce competition. They all have a quota of how many women theyre supposed to become part of their forces and so this campaign to get women to join the navy instead of the army and Different Things like that, and they all promote different types of jobs. This is a parachute rigor. How are they trying to get women to join the navy with this type of message . Challenging them. Going to try to challenge them. Its like anybody can join the w. A. C. S, but can you join the w. A. V. E. S. . Nobody uses the parachute in world war ii for fun. Thats not a pleasure thing or entertainment. This idea of this is important, can you handle it . Its a challenge to women. This idea of patriotism, this idea of youll be part of the gratitude. People will be thank you you. Youll be part of it and be able to say that you did it. And the this is kind of a silly thing. The Womens Army Corps was first it was the womens axial ri corps, but people made fun of their name, w. A. C. , quack, right . So as the other branches created their own womens organizations, they worked really hard to make better names. I know, right . But its about the names. Its about when youre competing, youre going to work on all levels. So the w. A. V. E. S. , thats nice, right . Its the navy, its water. Are you a w. A. V. E. Or a w. A. C. One of the women i studied said she almost joined the navy because they have cute hats. Thats kind of pretty. Heres the s. P. A. R. S. This is the coast guard. Always ready is the English Version of it. Isnt that clever . It sound better than w. A. C. And the marines, they were just marines. You got to respect that, right . The women marines were just marines. But it was free marine to fight. Thats about women serving in the military. Its about free a man to do something more important. You cant go to combat, but the men can. Lets do it. A lot of promotion of what types of jobs youre going to be doing. Theres a series of advertisements. The w. A. C. Has 239 kinds of jobs for women. Youre not going to be just a typist. You can work in a laboratory, do all sorts of Different Things. Get work experience. The navy promotes that you can be promoted. That you can get these different positions, right . And talks about the fact that youre going to get the same grade and the same pay as men. Were about equality here in the navy. You have this opportunity. Very patriotic. Theres a mansized job for you in the navy. Hes going to fight. You work here. This is one of my favorites, of course. We have the pioneer women statue on our campus here. I love this image of the pioneer woman out there defending her wagon with her rifle. Are you as good as she is . Can you live up to this legacy . And, again, in the w. A. C. , you can work in a hospital. Not as a nurse, but separate. This one i think is interesting. This is a ladies home journal add for ivory soap. Shes in the military. Shes a w. A. C. , but its about the man. This is what youre fighting for. And you can still get your man even if youre in a uniform. She looks very sassy. She does, doesnt she . And then this is competition as well. Youve got all of these efforts to get women into the military but we need women as ordinance workers. So this competition to get women, to have women doing these different jobs. Theres a push for africanamerican women as well. This was in remember, we have a lot of predominant newspapers in africanamerican communities, chicago, and other places. And they would hire artists to draw cartoons to try to promote women of color to be a part of the military as well, to serve as nurses. And they did, right . This is the postal directory battalion that was in paris. And they did stay segregated. And a group of africanamerican naval nurses, they were often worked with africanamerican soldiers and sailors, right . They kept them all segregated. And you know my Favorite Group here, the Women Air Force Service Pilots of world war ii, the archives are here at tw, right in the back corner there. These women worked to free men up so that they could go fly in combat. We have 25,000 women apply for the training program. The training starts in houston. But you guys have been to houston, right . The idea that the weather is not great for flying. A lot of fog and a lot of rain seasonally. They moved out to sweet water which is west of ft. Worth, of course, and they did their training there. 25,000 women applied. When i started my research, i thought that number was made up because Jacqueline Corcoran makes stuff up sometimes. She does. But ive seen them. Theyre in the National Archives, all of these letters of women saying, please, i want to fly. Only 830 were picked. 80 of the women had two years of college. They could be very selective. This is at a time when only 4 of the american women had college degrees. It was a selective group. They did a wide variety of jobs. They started as ferry pilots with air transport command flying the planes from place to plane within the continental United States. They did not go overseas. They did not fly in combat. They just stayed within the continental United States. A little peak into canada a couple times, and a little peak into the caribbean a few times. But for the most part, just within the continent. Then they moved to different jobs. Can you see the target back there . If youre going to send men overseas, youve got to teach them how to shoot. Shooting from the deck of a b17 against an airplane is a little different than duck hunting. You got to give the men practice. They would get two flights before they were sent overseas as gunners. But you have women flew these planes. This is a shot of two women flyingis
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