Rosie the Riveter \"Over 6

Rosie the Riveter

"Over 6 million women who had never worked for wages before took jobs, married women's labor force participation doubled, and unions gained 2.2 million women in a matter of 4 years. Not all of this was achieved without resistance, however. At the outset, most male managers were reluctant to employ women in all aspects of the defense industry, citing…'the lack of adequate toilet facilities' as an excuse for not hiring women" (Barker-Benfield, et al., 1998)

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan and the country launched a massive war effort -- sending millions of men to military training camps and building factories to produce planes, tanks, military vehicles, ships, and weapons. As a result of men leaving their jobs there was a need for women to take the places of the men who had to fight the war. This paper delves into the jobs those women were assigned to, including the women who worked in factories in and around Paterson, New Jersey. This paper also focuses on other issues related to women and the war effort at home during World War II.

Who was Rosie the Riveter and what did "she" do?

There really was no one named "Rosie the Riveter" -- she was a fictional character created by the United States propaganda campaign to encourage women to come to work in factories during World War II. According to Linda Lowen (About.com), Rosie's role was not intended to launch a new era in women's careers, nor was Rosie supposed to enhance the role of American women in the workplace. Instead, Rosie was created for the purposes of showing that women could fill the temporary industrial labor shortage that was caused by men volunteering to go off to war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The shortage was also due to the draft, which conscripted millions of men, took them from their jobs and put them in uniform.

Lowen references author Emily Yellin, who wrote Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II. Yellin reports that "Rosie the Riveter" was originally the title of a song in 1943; it was done by the Four Vagabonds and the lyrics encouraged women to become involved. "All day long whether rain or shine / She's part of the assembly line / She's making history working for victory" so her boyfriend Charlie, "fighting overseas, can someday come home and marry her" (Lowen, 2008).

Iconic artist / illustrator Norman Rockwell designed a rendering of Rosie the Riveter and it was published on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 23, 1943, Lowen explains. After that another version of Rosie the Riveter was drawn -- which was "more glamorous" and more "colorful" -- featuring Rosie wearing a red bandana, showing "decidedly feminine features" and the phrase "We Can Do it!" was placed at the top of the poster in big letters. This version of Rosie was commissioned by the United States War Production coordinating Committee and it was actually drawn by artist Howard Miller.

The themes that were woven into the propaganda campaign (according to the National Park Service) included: a) patriotic duty (it was argued that the war would end sooner if more women went to work in the factories and more U.S. soldiers would die if women didn't come to work); b) good salaries (the pay was good but there was some worry that if women were given a "fat paycheck…there was a real fear that once these women started earning a weekly paycheck, they would overspend and cause inflation"); c) some glamour was involved in the work (women would still be viewed as feminine notwithstanding the dirt and grime) d) the campaign claimed the work would be not too different from housework; and e) "spousal pride" would be bestowed on all the women who came forward and went to work in the war factories (Lowen, p. 1).

How many women were at work during the wartime effort to get Rosie the Riveter into the war effort? Anthropologist Margaret Mead estimated that "more than 3 million women went to work specifically to aid the war effort" but many more women went to the war-related factories simply because "they desperately needed the money" (White, et al., 2007). The jobs that women took included "shipyard welding and riveting to outfitting bombers and fighters to sewing powder bags," White explains. The uniforms that women wore to work in the war effort included "slacks, shirts, and work shoes" and those became "…a true badge of honor" (White).

There were men who sexually harassed Rosie the Riveter -- it "was common but generally downplayed" -- and in response to the angst some men felt, the women workers were "encouraged to dress down," to avoid "tight sweaters so as not to inflame the hormones" of the males working side-by-side with them, White continues. In the months just before the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese, the percentage of women in the workforce was less than 25%. But by 1945 that percentage jumped to 34.7% White explained.

After the war ended, most women returned home to housework but there were "many more" who chose to keep working because "…they liked the money, the freedom, and the many constructive changes they were making in their lives," White goes on. Some sociologists believe Rosie the Riveter actually opened the door to the feminist movement of the Sixties and Seventies.

Women who worked in the war effort in New Jersey

The Wright Aeronautical Corporation (WAC) had factories in Paterson, NJ, and in Ohio. WAC built airplanes to support the war effort, and in their newsletter ("Wright at the Moment") dated April 3, 1943, there is a story titled "First women in Men's Jobs." The article points to a time "two years ago" (that would have been 1941) when Wright Aeronautical "began to employ women at jobs traditionally held by men." The first five women (i.e., the first five Rosie Riveters at WAC) were assigned to the Cyclone-builders at WAC. They were: Peg Minor, Helen Mullanaphy, Anne Fergusen, Gloria Canova and Anna Brown (Wright at the Moment).

Another article in the same "Wright at the Moment" newsletter features a story about a former ballet dancer that went to work for WAC running a drill press. Her name was Sczinka Steppenoff, and she had danced for the Kaiser (Germany) and for the Crown Princes of Europe. Now, she is quoted saying, she gets up at 5:30 A.M. ("I who never used to get up early before") and she goes "whistling through the streets" because "I've never been so happy in my life. I feel that I'm doing something for my country," she writes.

She was born in Prague and arrived in the United States in 1921 with the Pavlowa dance troupe. Ten years later she became a citizen. While working for the WAC she became a "full-fledged drill operator" and she takes "as much pride in her work as anyone in her department," the article explained. She was able to do 60 drill jobs in a day, much to her "great satisfaction." She wears her WAC work badge on her Sunday coat (Wright at the Moment).

Another article in the April 3, 1943 newsletter shows Katherine Benson working at her machine in WAC Plant 3. Benson has just signed a pledge card that pledges $8 to go for food for American prisoners of war. Her $8 contribution pays for another food for 100 prisoners for a month, the article explains.

For every woman that worked in a Rosie the Riveter capacity in war-related factories around the country there was a unique story of what brought her to these tasks and what her outcome was in doing the "man's work" for the war effort. Mary Augusto is a classic case in point when it comes to an immigrant from Italy settling in America, pulling herself up by the proverbial bootstraps, and acting as any patriotic American would act.

She arrived at Ellis Island in 1920 and soon joined some of her siblings that had previously settled in Paterson, New Jersey. She got a job in Paterson's then-thriving silk mills (with electricity produced by the Passaic River hurtling over Great Falls) and during the evening hours (for three years) she attended the International Institute for Young Women (sponsored by the YWCA) in Paterson, to learn English.

She also attended Columbia Shorthand and Business College in Paterson, and received her degree in shorthand in 1923. Her English was proficient enough to allow her to get a job (at the age of 23 in 1924) with the New World (I Nuova Mondo) as an editor-translator (from Italian to English). The New World was an Italian-language daily newspaper in New York City. After five years there, she moved to Brooklyn and became a naturalized citizen (Burstyn, 1997, 231).

In 1931 after moving back to Paterson Mary opened a candy store; Paterson was in serious economic decline in the early 1930s as the silk and iron industries moved away. But Mary and her husband, living in the Dublin section of Paterson, launched an Italian-language newspaper (the Italian Voice); there were about 42,000 Italians living in Paterson at the time, Burstyn writes. Mary and her husband also started the Colonial Sentinel (carrying legal notices and news in English) and in their papers they featured women of Italian descent on the front page (Burstyn, 231).

But by the 1940s the Augusto couple took an anti-fascist position in their papers (notwithstanding the fact that Italy had been taken over by fascist Mussolini) and Mary had a column called "The Parrot" which "combined political and social commentary," Burstyn explains on page 231. While she had her newspaper job during the day, it didn't stop Mary from working the "late shift at a nearby Wright Aeronautics defense plant." While working in a Rosie the Riveter capacity, Mary "…mastered the process of precision grinding and produced plane parts for the war effort" in Paterson (Burstyn, 231).

The money that Mary Augusto made working the late shirt at Wright Aeronautics defense plant, "…provided the money to purchase a building for the newspaper (for La Voce) in the neighborhood. She published in that building until her death. Mary ran for mayor in 1947, the first woman to run for mayor of Paterson. She championed school reform, welfare service, housing reform and other social changes. She was "excluded from candidate forums" and lost the race for mayor but Burstyn (213) explains that Mary was seen in Paterson as "…a courageous, reform-minded woman who demonstrated by her own actions her belief in the ability of women, the working class, and Italian-Americans." Later she won a seat as justice of the peace in Paterson.

Elizabeth Bracigliano was born in Paterson and got married in June, 1942. After her husband went to war in January, 1943, Bracigliano decided to "go and do something, do my part" (Kelsey, 2005). Bracigliano went to work at Wright Aeronautical Plant 7 in Wood Ridge, New Jersey (not far from Paterson). Bracigliano became an engineer tester for the B-29 bombers. Her job entailed hoisting the engines up to a wind tunnel (with a chain hoist), testing the engines for a couple of hours and picking the "wooden props that were acclimated to the pressure -- the pressure outside" (Kelsey, 2005).

Bracigliano explains that "you were either the pilot or the observer" and after making a record of the testing of the engine, the women checked for "oil leaks, gas leaks, any loose parts. We had government inspectors come… once that was all corrected, we would test them again" (Kelsey, p. 2). So the Bracigliano name was on all the logs that traveled with the planes to the war zones (so officials there could see the testing was complete). "Funny thing," Bracigliano recalled in her interview with Kelsey, "my husband was in service in India, and working on bombs and so forth, and he come across a log sheet with my name on it, which was quite a surprise and proud for him, to show and tell everyone" (p. 2).

The women workers were all let go in 1946, "more or less. I guess maybe just supervision or something was kept" but she went home and her husband came home from the war and in 1946 she gave birth to her daughter. Once her two daughters were a little older, she went to work for Seal-O-Matic helping build Minutemen missiles in Haledon, NJ. Kelsey, who was conducting the interview, asked Mary if working at WAC during the war made a difference in her life. "Oh it did! We had picked out furniture when we were first married, and I was proud that I was able to pay off that bill, working" (p. 2).

Bracigliano's mother was "a real Rosie, because she would do the riveting and so forth on these baffles" (the still protectors around the pistons).

Maureen Honey writes that once the U.S. went to war against Japan women were offered a "significant step up the occupational ladder" (Honey, 1984, p. 22). In fact, a woman working in a hotel or retail store could expect to make around $24.10 per week but a woman working in the war effort could expect a weekly check of $40.35 (Honey, 22). Indeed the wages were so good and women fit in so well that they wished to continue this kind of employment after the war was over.

"…Surveys taken in 1944 revealed that 75 to 80% of women in war production areas planned to remain in the labor force after victory was won" and they anticipated staying in the war-effort-related jobs they were in. But women were fired from those jobs and "offered work in female fields" which they did not want. The press and government portrayed the female war worker's "eager return to the home" but in fact it "belied the reality of women's resistance to losing their improved status in the workforce" (Honey, 23).

Leila J. Rupp explains that there were some interesting dynamics for women after the war ended. As other writers and authors have mentioned, Rupp explains that "Men returning home sough both their jobs and the comforts of a wife at home, if they could afford it" (Rupp, 2004, p. 53). Meanwhile many women who had moved from "poorly paid service jobs into more financially rewarding factory jobs preferred to remain, employers moved to restore the prewar sexual division of labor" (Rupp, 53).

In contrast to the Soviet bloc countries -- where after the war women were encouraged to combine paid work and motherhood" -- the goal of "returning American women to the home became a hallmark of American life" (Rupp, 53). Ironically, and just as striking as the contrast between Soviet block policies on women and the American approach, was the fact that American occupation authorities in Japan and Germany "insisted that those countries' new constitutions grant women equal rights" because American occupying leaders believed that women "could serve as the foundation of democratic governments" (Rupp, 53). The irony here is the fact that while some American leaders were touting the need to have women achieve equal opportunities in defeated Germany and Japan, the Equal Rights Amendment "…languished in congressional committees" in Washington, D.C., home of the winning government's executive and legislative branches.

How the propaganda effort came into fruition to create "Rosie the Riveter"

As to how the massive propaganda effort was put in place, this propaganda effort was necessitated by the fact that private industry had "…refused to remove prewar barriers against the employment of women until the last possible moment" (Honey, 29). Prejudice against women, African-Americans, Jews and aliens were "deep-seated" and so a campaign needed to be developed to overcome these restrictions against women in the war workforce. The Office of War Information (OWI), basically the propaganda machine for the war effort at home, was established in 1942. And commercial advertisers cooperated after "overwhelming pressure" from the government. President Franklin Roosevelt tried hard to "sidestep the controversy over using the media for propaganda purposes" by insisting that the OWI "…would merely disseminate information about government programs in a neutral way" (Honey, 32). But in fact heavy pressure was applied by the federal government to use the existing media to reach women who were needed to fill the slots vacated by men who went to war.