Women and Gender Ideology during World War II

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Women and Gender Ideology during World War II
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Interpreting the impact of WWII

• Historians disagree
• Some see WWII as a watershed (William Chafe)
• Others stress continuity, or even regression
• Indications of change
• Dramatic rise of women in the workforce
• More married and older women
• Breakdown of sexual segregation
• Women in the military
• Evidence of continuity
• Postwar period period of retreat
• Attitudes about womens place and feminine
  fulfillment

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Wartime Homemaker

• 2/3rds of all women did not hold paying jobs
  during the war
• Importance of patriotic consumption
• Price controls
• Rationing
• Homefront pledge
• Conservation
• Victory gardens

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The Homefront Pledge
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Pass the Ammunition!
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Debate over conscription

• Austin-Wadsworth Act (1943)
• Opposed by
• Womens Committee to Oppose Conscription
• Right-wing patriotic women
• Left-wing peace organizations
• Supported by
• ER, many progressive women
• Industrial and military leaders
• Comparisons to Britain and Russia
• Policy of conscripting women
• 70 of working-age women in the workforce
• Comparison to Nazi Germany
• No conscription almost no increase in percentage
  of women in the labor force

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Recruiting women workers

• Severe labor shortages by 1942
• Calls for womanpower
• 6 million women entered the workforce
• Percentage rose by 57
• Women were 25 of labor force in 1940 35 by
  mid-1944
• 75 of new women workers were married 60 were
  over 35
• Revising ideas about womens work
• 2 million women took clerical jobs
• 2 million went to work in defense plants

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Poster recruiting women for civil service jobs
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Campaign to Recruit Industrial Workers

• Domesticating industrial jobs
• Downplaying womens economic motives
• Womens patriotism an extension of their personal
  relations
• Emphasis on mens approval
• Emphasis on the temporary nature of womens war
  work

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War Manpower Commission Poster, 1944
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War Manpower Commission, 1944
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Westinghouse War Production Coordinating
Committee, 1943
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Rosie the Riveter, Saturday Evening Post,Norman
Rockwell, May 29, 1943
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Michelangos Isaiah
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• The Greatest Mother in the World
• Alonzo Foringer
• Red Cross, 1918

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Women and military service

• 350,000 women joined the military
• WAAC (May 1942) WAC (1943)
• Opposed by some conservatives
• Supported by most military leaders
• Other branches followed suit

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Womens Army Corps
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WAVES
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Restrictions on womens military service

• Women never assigned combat positions
• No mothers accepted
• No positions of authority over men
• No education on venereal disease
• Dismissed/penalized for sexual encounters
• Higher age limit (20)
• No dependency allotments

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Soviet pilots Marina Raskova and Natalya Meckin
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You cant beat the Axis if you get VD
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Lipstick matters
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• Betty Grable

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V-J DayAlfred Eisenstadt,Life Magazine
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Dorothea Lange, The Shibuya family in front of
their home, Mountain View, CA, 1942
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Leisa Meyer

• How were WACs viewed and portrayed within the
  broader culture?
• What was the slander campaign against the WACs,
  and how did leaders respond?
• How did the WAC attempt to regulate enlisted
  womens sexuality?
• What was the status of black women in the WAC?