Cheryl A. Heeke, Rosie the Riveter: Study of the Conditions and Effects of Female Participation in the World War II Labor Force (1982)

The dramatic mobilization of the American female population to augment the civilian labor force during World War II did not arise from a desire to upgrade the political, economic, or social status of women. Rather, this was a change born of necessity. Women were needed to maintain a productive wartime economy. When the need for the additional women workers subsided at the end of the war, policy makers sought to reverse the flow of women into the labor market.

While there had been a slow and steady rise in the number of women in the workforce in the decades leading up to World War II, the war brought about a dramatic infusion of women into the work force as well as changes in the occupational distribution of women. From 1940 to 1944, there was a 119% increase in the employment of women as craftsmen, foremen, operators and non-farm laborers. Similarly, there were large increases in clerical occupations for women during that time. The number of women involved in domestic and personal services, which had previously had the largest number of female workers, declined.

In order to facilitate women to move into the workplace, government and industry relaxed protective legislation and enacted an "Equal Work-Equal Pay" policy. The influx of working women also created new problems like worker pregnancies and a need for child care.

At the end of the war, the tide turned. With soldiers returning from the war, the media and government began urging women to return to the home. The Selective Service Act of 1943 guaranteed returning veterans their old jobs. While the media praised women workers during the war, it now tried to manipulate them into leaving their jobs and providing happy homes for their returning husbands. However, the attempts to remove women from the workforce were not successful in reducing participation to pre-war levels. Instead, the wartime labor experience became the foundation for the rising trend of women working outside the home in later decades.

 

Revised July 23, 2003 (MD)