FREE ESSAY ON AMERICAN WOMEN DURING WORLD WAR II

AMERICAN WOMEN DURING WORLD WAR II

American Women During World War II.
America's entry into World War II posed opportunities for American women domestically,
yet paradoxically heightened fears in the polity about the exact role that women should
adopt during wartime. A central issue that dominated women's lives during this period was
how to combine the private sphere of the home, with the new demands of the war economy in
the public sphere. Women made significant gains in the military, the war economy and in
some cases, in terms of political influence. Yet these gains were misleading for policy
makers utilised the female workforce for short-term gains during war, with a long-term
goal of seeing women return to the domestic sphere and reinforcing traditional gender
roles. Significantly also, American women encountered different experiences of life
during World War II since factors such as ethnicity and class largely shaped how women
responded to, or were affected by the Second World War.
Owing to the critical demand for labour, employers during the war helped to break down
traditional gender roles by recruiting women to traditionally male jobs. Government,
industry and the media all encouraged women to serve their patriotic duty by taking a
job. Throughout the war however, policy makers sent out ambiguous messages to women about
what their proper role in American society was. The motive behind this ambiguity rested
in the fact that the government feared that the long-term consequences of women in the
workplace, since gender roles could permanently be disrupted if women became reluctant to
return to the domestic sphere when men returned from war. Many governmental agencies
aimed to hinder sweeping changes for American women during the war- particular attention
was placed on women in the military. Business associations largely worked independently
from the polity, and tensions emerged when women's organisations highlighted the
discriminiatory practices of employers. Unions were also a highly important source of
oppression to American women, for men feared that women would gain too much power
if...Gender AND WORK BOOK. Moreover, the social and political fear of women in the
workplace was largely confusing anyway, for women had worked outside the home in huge
numbers ever since the Depression.
And yet, after Pearl Harbor , the government issued non-discriminatory directives to
recruit women into the workforce since by 1942 , only 29 percent of America's fifty-two
million women had jobs. Thus, the War Manpower Commission ( WMC ) was established to
actively recruit women so that in the beginning of 1943  the shortage of workers had
toppled many sex, race, and age barriers. By 1944 , married women constituted the
majority of the female workforce at 72.2 percent, and the issue of married women at work
revealed the contradictions of  womanpower. At the heart of this dilemma was the fear in
the polity that women would become too attached to their new found economic independence,
since women were told by industry on the one hand that  (the) American homemaker...has
the strength and ability to take her place in a vital War industry; yet through the
government backed WMC women were told through pamphlets that :  Even in a national
emergency as critical as this, the welfare of our children must be of paramount
importance... Implicit in these war messages was the notion that women were contributing
to the war economy out of duty to their children and/or their male loved ones fighting in
the war. Therefore , in the immediate economic crisis created by World War II ,
government and industry had little option but to actively seek female employment,
although in the long-term, the government, through its propaganda messages, revealed its
long-term aim of seeing women return to their natural domain in the home.
Many women reconciled this tension by arguing that work outside the home satisfied family
needs by providing financial security. Work outside the home was also appealing because
it provided emotional bonding between women whose loved ones were fighting abroad. Yet
although the war raised living standards, women's long-term position in the workplace was
not guaranteed. When women came to plants they faced hostility from male co-workers, and
cases of sexual harassment at work were commonplace. Women who worked in factories for
example , presented a challenge to gender roles, and male dominance in the workplace
seemed to be under threat. To counter this, personnel managers typically taught women  to
be neat and trim and well put together. It helps their morale...(and) our prestige too.
Fearing that women would find intrinsic value in work on a more permanent basis ,
employers, with the backing of the Labor Department and the WMC , put forth propaganda
campaigns that emphasised how women's work in the war economy was only temporary. 
To further this view, industrialists were unsympathetic to child care issues, for
although they were forced to employ women out of a shortage of labour, they still held
patriarchal views. One industrialist stated:  Experience has shown that the surest and
quickest way to disrupt a family...is to take the mother out of the home. This is an
interesting point, especially since women represented 72.2 percent of the female
workforce. The patriarchal views of some employers overrode the need to employ women for
the sake of the war effort, and although most industrialists employed women, they
expressed their disapproval towards female entry in war plants on other ways. For
example, job segregation by sex was explicitly acknowledged for jobs were formally
labelled male and female. The two largest electrical firms, GE and Westinghouse,
continued this practice until the end of the war. 
The Women's Bureau responded to stating that it made sense to cater for a huge pool of
the workforce by implementing child care facilities, and throughout the war, childcare
facilities were woefully inadequate. Government policy conveniently endorsed a Children's
Bureau report which linked child care to juvenile delinquency. The report implied that
paid working women were to blame for the  slower mental development, social ineptness,
(and) weakened initiative (of children). It can be argued that government agencies were
genuinely concerned about the detrimental effects of women's work outside the home on
children. In 1943 Congress passed the Lanham Act which desginated funds for childcare
facilities. 
This argument holds little credibility when examining the extent of government
propaganda. 1944 was an important shift in media's tone towards childcare, no longer was
Rosie the Riveter praised for her patriotic qualities ... Preparing women for their
post-war return to domesticity, 1944 advertisements increasingly dramatised the unhappy
plight of the children of war workers. By the end of the war, only one in ten women
enjoyed the benefits of childcare. The government's commitment to women in work was very
weak. When the Allied victory in Europe seemed imminent, the tone of government sponsored
advertisements changed in tone and content. Business also seized the opportunity to
portray women as a threat to the American familt - the deeper motive for this was to
secure men's jobs who would imminently return from Europe. The Armco Manufacturing
Company released an ad in 1944 stating:  Some jubiliant day mother will stay home again,
doing the job she likes best- making a home for you and daddy. Government and industry
continued their inslaught on the worknig mother for the same motive: to ensure that the
transition from female-male work patterns would be smooth once the war was over.
Yet women responded to such sexism at work by advocating women's rights at work through
unionisation. Women soon became alienated by many trade unions that tolerated job
discrimination and wage inequalities. Women often confronted difficulties with attending
union meetings, for their home duties absorbed much fo their spare time. This gave
powerful union members, such as the President of the United Autoworkers Association , to
voice comments like  We have never advocated women taking a very active part (in unions)
unchallenged. Manufacturers customarily placed women in the lowest-paying jobs and paid
them less for the performance of work traditionally done by men. In Michigan for example,
state law guaranteed women equal pay for similar work, but the statue was so vague that
it was virtually unenforceable. Labour organisations like the NWTUL failed to mount a
sustained campiagn for equal pay because employers proved adept in maintaining the sexual
pay differential by such means as giving titles to similar jobs or by changing job
classifications from skilled to semi-skilled. 
Yet the sheer number of women working in the war economy worked to women's advantage for
by 1944 women constituted more than 22 percent of trade union membership. Indicating the
level of importance that the female workforce had reached, in 1944 the President fo the
United Auto Workers ( UAW), Walter Reuther, pledged to  give special consideration to
seniority, safety standards, maternity leave practices, and other problems relating to
the employment of women. Unionism then, was a central way in which women pushed for equal
rights in the workplace, and some trade unions like the UAW addressed women's needs.
Still, a contradiction emerged during the war for although women were actively recruited
by industry and praised by government and media campaigns, women had very little
opportunity to influence policy that directly affected their lives. From the heights of
national policy it was men who made the decisions, something which suggested that
politics was a male domain. Organisations which did have prominence such as the National
Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL), suffered from their inability to embrace the myriad
of women in the war economy - their white middle class dominance meant that working class
and black women felt alienated by the League's politics. Race and class were important
obstacles to a strong political voice for women during the war, for national women's
groups were plagued by class elitism. In this sense many paid working women felt that
their interests were not being represented for even the President of the NWTUL conceded
that  higher salaried women too often allow their concern over the special
discriminations against women in their group to obscure the more fundamental problem
which millions of working men and women face. 
Although race and class divided American women during the war , women found consensus in
the fact that direct representation in Washington was the key to securing the political
needs of American women. Organisations like the League of Women Voters (LWV) focused more
on the needs of professional women than the needs of working class or black women , to
reinforce the view that middle class women dominated wartime politics more than any other
group. The wartime shortage of men made women valuable campaign workers and as activists
it has been asserted that this was  quickened when the need for womanpower during World
War II increased the importance of women's public roles. The Second World War then , can
be seen as a turning point for women in terms of political influence, although the
downside to this was that privileged, professional women gained more from the political
process than working class or minority women did.
Yet although minority women responded to the issues of gender inequality at work, the
future role for women after the war was problematic. Marriage soared during the war years
for many men hoped that marriage would defer conscription to the war. This alone suggests
that women's roles as wives and mothers were still dominant during the war because the
nation witnessed a 25 percent rise in the population aged five and under. The popularity
of marriage and the traditional gender roles that marriage carried, was exploited during
the war. For example, the Office of War Information, established in the summer of 1942,
worked closely with the media. President Roosevelt soon denied the OWI was being used for
propaganda , yet only months after the OWI was formed, wartime propaganda began to
likened women's war work to domestic chores. These trends serve to reinforce the view
that the government's immediate role for women was to serve their country by, in the
words of one media campaign doing a man's job so that he may fight to help finish this
war sooner. 
One of the most significant departures from traditional gender roles was the enlistment
of women in the armed services. From 1941 onwards, military minds in Washington
stonewalled anyone who had the temerity to suggest that women should be in the military.
Politicians in typical gerrymandering fashion, made flimsy promises of considering an
auxiliary of sorts while secretly trying to figure out how to stop American women's
potential influence in the military . Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers introduced a bill
on May 28th , 1941 to establish a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, and the bill eventually
succeeded because there was no hint of full status for women. The actions taken by the
government reflected their reluctance to create long-term trends for female participation
in the military after the war. 
When WAAC was formed in 1942, women faced difficulties with their male superiors, for as
General George Marshall later reflected, women in the military encountered:  a great
reluctance of army officers generally, particularly those in high control, to the
interjection of a female organization. The recruitment of women in the military was based
more on the general wartime strategy of  maximum utilization of manpower, technology and
industrial capacity , rather than any genuine attempts to advance women's rights in
American society. Neither did military reform undermine the ongoing racism that black
women faced, for black nurses served in segregated military camps during the war.
Conflict surfaced as to the exact role that women were to undertake in the military.
Women's corps undermined conventional wisdom about a woman's natural role. Thus,
propaganda played a large role in limiting the significance of women in the military for
war films emphasised that the army needed women's delicate hands and required women in
hospital work because  there is a need in a man for comfort and attention that only a
woman can fill. After World War II returning servicewomen did not recieve a hero's
welcome in the way that men did, and unlike men, women were denied veterans preference
after the war. This evidence would seem to give credence to the contention that the
government was responsive to women's demands during the war because every citizen was
perceived as valuable in the war effort, but that once the war ended and men returned,
traditional gender views were re-established.
One group of American women used the change in attitudes towards women for their own
social and personal gain, namely lesbian women. At a time when women were portrayed by
media and government advertisements as vital to the functioning of America,  love between
women were understood and undisturbed and even protected. Military service became an
social network for lesbians - rarely were lesbians discharged on the grounds of engaging
in same-sex relationships. To support this argument , one lesbian woman states that the
appeal of life in WAAC was due to the indifference that military officers expressed
towards lesbianism, for:  There were no problems and we wanted to keep it that way. We
all knew that if we were discreet we wouldn't get caught. 
Indeed , lesbians were valued by the military for their perceived strength in service.
After the war, there occurred a less formal transition for lesbians in the military, i.e.
from the ranks, but this was coupled with the persecution of lesbian women. The public
perception of the lesbian as sick and a threat to innocent women in the years after the
war, confirmed the need for secrecy. Ironically however, the military contributed to the
establishment of a larger lesbian subculture when it became less lenient in its policy
towards homosexuals once the war was over. Thousands of lesbians were loaded on queer
ships and sent with undesirable discharges to the nearest US port. Therefore, unlike most
American women, lesbians consolidated the social advances they gained during the war by
creating lesbian subcultures in areas like New York, or by staying in the closet and
remaining in military service. 
Black women often experienced continuity with the past during the war because racism was
just as prevalent during the years 1941-1945 as it had been in earlier decades. Jobs in
wartime offices, stores and factories proved elusive to black women, even after the
creation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission (1941). This new federal agency ,
was designed to reverse the years of racial discrimination that black Americans had
endured since emancipation in 1865 - the implications for black women were therefore
promising. The results of the Commission were fair at best, for although the government
hired black female clerical workers, these women were confined to segregated offices and
were promoted six times fewer than whites with similar efficiency ratings. Even when
black women proved discrimination the FECP could only recommend withdrawal of war
contracts for the offending employer, an unlikely measure because maximum, uninterrupted
war productivity was top priority. These findings are not surprising considering that The
War Department did not extend its relaxed attitude towards female employment to black
women either. The Department openly stated that they needed competent, white female help
at all levels whereas emphasising the fact that we do not employ colored at the same
time. 
The Fair Employment Commission also failed in tackling companies' discrimination. For
instance , in Detroit , Sears Roebuck lowered barriers enough to hire black women in the
stock departments, but would not hire blacks in sales, where they would be seen in
public. Therefore, owing to the reality of job discrimination, black women often took the
lowest-paid and most hazardous jobs during the war , or were re-employed in the domestic
service jobs that they had lost during the Depression. However, the hostility that black
women encountered at work led to the politicisation of many black women during the war.
in 1943 Mary McLeod Bethune of the National Youth Administration won a promise from
defence plants to hire black women united in other campaigns such as the NWTUL's campaign
to end lynching and racial harassment in the workplace , and in 1942 nationwide protests
amongst black women's groups forced many employers to reconsider their employment
practices. It is relevant to add that for many black women, the conversion from domestic
service to factory work marked a welcome shift in job prospects, for black women were
entering a white dominated employment field.
Ultimately however, such challenges to racial injustice did little to alter racial
attitudes during the war. Cities across the US continued to devalue black women's work in
a way as to suggest that black women's concerns were of little importance to policy
makers. For example , a black woman at the Edgewood Arsenal earned $18 per week whereas
her white counterparts earned on average twice this amount despite working fewer hours.
It was only after the war that black women's prospects improved because the momentum for
social change was gaining strength. In the late forties, black women had finally begun to
gain access to better jobs, since in the late forties the number of black women in
low-paying jobs had fell by 15 percent by 1950. 
The end of the war further refutes the view that women made substantive gains from the
Second World War. When war production ended , many women quit their jobs. Women's net
gains during the war were negligible for although the shift to clerical jobs continued
after the war, very few women occupied skilled craft jobs. The Women's Bureau concluded
that:  Only a few women have been allowed to continue in the newer fields of employment,
and thus continue to use skills learned during the war. It is true that women's
employment underwent visible change during the war and the absence of men allowed women
to expand their influence in a variety of educational and civic ways. 
However, underscoring this potential long-term change were government backed media
campaigns which sought to restrict women's public activities and possible long-term
goals. Mobilisation propaganda as well as the attractions of jobs induced young women to
give priority to immediate employment, so that despite the greater educational
opportunities created by the absence of men, women's college enrollments actually
declined during the war. Social welfare and child-care experts called upon women to pay
closer attention to their maternal responsibility, and this demonstrated the government's
eventual desire to see women return to the domestic sphere once the war was over.
Post-war purges of women from men's jobs was strengthened by male workers and unionists,
who colluded in the expulsion of women from the auto and electrical industries.
Therefore, similar to American politicians, unionists' loyalties ultimately resided with
men. By April 1947 the prewar employment pattern had been re-established and most
employed women were clerical workers, operatives, domestics, and service workers . A sad
truth powerfully emerged after the war: there had been no revolution in attitudes, women
faced the reality that the series of measures introduced during the war were done so
grudgingly in the face of national emergency. 
Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Rosalind Rosenberg , Divided Lives : American Women In The Twentieth Century , Hill &
Wang , New York , 1992.
Susan M. Hartmann , The Home Front And Beyond - American Women In The 1940s , Twayne
Publishers , Boston , 1982.
Alice Kessler-Harris , Out To Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States
, New York , Oxford University Press , 1982.
D'Ann Campbell , Women at War with America: Patriotic Lives in a Patriotic Era ,
Cambridge , Harvard University Press , 1984 .
Karen Anderson , Wartime Women : Sex Roles , Family Relations , And the Status of Women
During World War II , Greenwood Press , Connecticut , 1981.
Leila J. Rupp , Mobilizing Women for War : German and American Propaganda , Princeton ,
Princeton University Press , 1978.
Lillian Faderman , Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers - A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth
Century America , New York , Penguin , 1991.
Sherna Berger Gluck , Rosie the Rivieter Revisited: Women , The War , and Social Change ,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Ruth Milkman , Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II
, Urbana , University of Illinois Press , 1987.
Maureen Honey , Creating Rosie the Riveter : Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World
War II , Amherst , The University of Massachusetts Press , 1984.
Mary Beth Norton Ed. , Major Problems in American Women's History , Lexington MA, D.C.
Heath & Company , 1989.