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WOMEN IN WORLD WAR II: DILEMMAS AND OPPORTUNITIES. By Lori Maney and Kevin O’Reilly. RECRUITMENT POSTERS. Mien Kampf.
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WOMEN IN WORLD WAR II: DILEMMAS AND OPPORTUNITIES By Lori Maney and Kevin O’Reilly
RECRUITMENT POSTERS Mien Kampf
Sure enough, all across the country, the public was bombarded with spirited print and radio ads, magazine articles, and posters with slogans like “Do the Job he Left Behind” or “Women in the War—We Can’t Win Without Them” depicting noble, pretty but serious female war workers on the job. ….The campaigns glamorized war work, always showing that women could maintain their femininity and still be useful. Our Mothers’ War (46)
They were constantly admonished not to become too masculine. One article in a Navy shipyard newsletter counseled women to “be feminine and ladylike even though you are filling a man’s shoes.” At Boeing, charm courses were scheduled for women workers. (Our Mothers’ War) (59)
Many women workers also took other traditionally male jobs during the war, in agriculture, sales, and clerical work. These were jobs that opened up for women as forking men either went to war or took higher-paying industrial jobs themselves. (Our Mothers’ War) (47) • Almost 50 percent of all adult women were employed in this country at some point during the height of war production…. (Our Mothers’ War) (47)
Husbandly pressure on housewives not to enlist for the war-production front takes much subtler terms than an overt “I object.” Largely, it shapes up as men’s time-hallowed, unspoken refusal to share in home responsibilities, an attitude that puts an intolerable double burden on the working wife….When household equipment needs replacement, when the children’s shoe size changes, when the toothpaste runs out, it is Mother not Father who scribbles memoranda on scraps of paper and squeezes in necessary shopping something, somewhere….If a woman can learn to run a drill press, why can’t a man learn to run a washing machine? Our Mothers’ War (45)
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League started in 1943….The women not only had to be skilled players, but they had to look good on and off the field too….The uniforms were designed to be ultra-feminine and modeled after figure skaters outfits. The women wore satin tights and knee-high baseball socks with a short tunic dress that fared out at the bottom. (Our Mothers’ War) (301)
Ration Coupon Ration Line
This was 1942, and everything was pretty frantic. I was the riveter. And on the other side on the A frame facing me was the bucker. This bucker was a very tall black man. The noise of the riveting going on deadened any conversation. But we worked great together. We just had it all figured out and we just went at it. And it was fine. But working near us were groups of men. I was the only woman in that section. And every time we had a break these white, former automakers who were not in the military, they would come over and hassle me. “You don’t have to work with that nigger. We’ll find you another place to work. Join the union and we’ll take care of you.” And they persisted and they persisted. And I told them, “Hey leave me alone. I ‘m working fine with me partner. I don’t have any gripes.” They kept telling me they could get me a white man to work with. But I kept telling them that we were a good team, and I kept my partner. (Our Mothers’ War ) (53)
“We Die Together. Why Can’t We Eat Together?” and “Are You for Hitler’s Way (race Supremacy) or the American Way (Equality)? Make Up Your Mind!” (Our Mothers’ War) (202) “DOUBLE V” Campaign Victory over Nazism and Fascism abroad AND victory over racism at home
One soldier wrote, “Join the WAVES or WAC and you are automatically a prostitute in my opinion.” Another wrote: “Any service woman—Wac, Wave, Spar, Nurse, Red Cross---isn’t respected.” Another soldier wrote his sister saying: “It’s no damn good, Sis, and I for one would be very unhappy if you joined them…..Whey can’t these Gals just stay home and be their own sweet little self, instead of being patriotic?” Our Mothers’ War (132)
What is this woman doing (left) for which she was awarded a medal (right)?
Probably the most successful female spy of the war was a master at fooling everyone who met her. People in the rural villages of central France to the sought of Paris had no idea that the haggard, old peasant woman Marcelle Montagne, who they saw herding cattle and delivering goat’s milk in early 1944, was really a vital, thirty-eight-year-old American woman named Virginia Hall (pictured in the previous slide) who had attended Radcliffe and Barnard colleges. Not even the German troops occupying the area were able to figure out that this frail graying woman, stopped over her walking stick, was the elusive spy whom the Gestapo, the brutal Nazi special police, had called “one of the most valuable Allied agents in France.” (Our Mothers’ War) (228)
The elite in Hawaii—the powerful, wealthy, white families—believed they need the prostitutes to provide a buffer. Without the sex workers, it was feared, the upper-class, white daughters of the island would fall prey to the undeniable urges of the massive influx of sex-starved military men that the Army and Navy brought to the island. (Our Mothers’ War) (308)
“A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched—so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents—grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.”(Our Mothers’ War) (265)
OPPORTUNITIES AND DILEMMAS • Opportunities • Traditional male jobs (agriculture, sales, and clerical work). • Non traditional jobs (riveter, welder, street car conductor) • Entertainers, baseball players • Military—WACs, WAVES, SPARs, Marines, WASPS, WAFS • Volunteer organizations : USO, Red Cross, Stage Door Canteens • Spies • Dilemmas • Child care/ day care • Juggling work and family • Harassment in the workplace by men • Unequal pay • Segregation of Women and African-Americans • Racism – Jane Crow • Unequal job advancement opportunities • Slander/Responsible for venereal disease/Double standard fro women surrounding sexuality
