Women's Roles during World War II

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Campbell, D'Ann. 1984. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era. Harvard

University Press.

Campbells book reveals the tension that was caused by the women in America through the

divergence between their actual and idealized tasks in the society. The book surveys broad and

critical aspects that other historians had investigated in detail. It is a comprehensive evaluation of

the experiences of women during the Second World War. Also, it gives a wide-ranging review of

the working women. The book provides a welcoming analysis of proof and the interpretation of

matters that are critical to the understanding of the womens history in America. It provides

challenges to the prevailing wisdom, as well as the perceptions of other scholars.

Campbell argues that World War II did not encompass a watershed in the history of the

participation of the American women in the labor force. Neither the women nor the society were

ready for a critical change of values. The perception was that a womans main roles were at

home in which, she was to be a mother and a wife. The author agrees that women made vital

contributions to the war. However, they were at war with their country too. They were eager to

be part of the countrys labor force, industrial capacity, and technology.

Honey, Maureen. 1999. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II, 1945. University

of Missouri Press.

Honeys book indicates that the recruitment posters, newsreels, and advertisements largely

portrayed the white women as concerned mothers, defense plant employees, dedicated wives,

and army women. Conversely, the African-American women also participated in every aspect

that involved the home-front activities during the Second World War, however, they were not

considered as important to the nation building as the white women who took part in the war. The
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numerous white images left for posterity faces, such as Rosie the Riveter doubting the African-

American womens contributions to the war struggle.

Honey notes that the customary literature anthologies of Blacks in America jump from

the Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s with no or little reference to the years between such

periods. The book not only sheds light on the literature of such years, but it also presents the

Black womens image as activists in the community that weakened the sex typecasts of the

Second World War period.

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Women's Roles during World War II

Introduction

The society of America largely considered women as mothers and homemakers before

the start of the Second World War. There were exceptions in which women could work as

waitresses, store clerks, teachers, telephone operators, secretaries, and laundresses and a few

other careers. Most of the occupations were for men as some states went to the extent of barring

females from holding jobs that earned wages or salaries1. Conversely, with millions of the males

voluntarily or via conscription getting into the armed forces, the attitude towards womens roles

quickly changed as the country was threatened with labor shortage that almost crippled its

capability to champion for democracy. The necessity to mobilize the whole populace behind the

war was extremely compelling to the level that social and political leaders agreed that men

would have to change how they viewed womens roles as the country was facing national

emergency.

The entry of America into the war was approximately ten months old when the National

Federation of Business and Professional Womens Club that is currently known as the Business

and Professional Womens Foundation got ready to start its fourth yearly National Womens

Week2. President Roosevelt dispatched a correspondence to the president of the organization, Dr.

Maffet. The letter was designed to rally the women of America and make them committed

1McEuen, Melissa A. Women, Gender, and World War II. American History Journal, 2016.
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.55

2 McEuen, Melissa A.
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partakers in the war struggle. Roosevelt informed women that their efforts could build the nation

in a range of ways. He also informed them that the increasing war struggle called for the services

of all the able-bodied and qualified individuals. Women were also made aware that they would

participate in the manufacturing programs. The president encouraged various agencies to adopt

his perception of mobilizing women to turn up for work. It was considered as a national call.

Transforming the images of the roles of women in America was swiftly adopted by the social and

political leaders. Women were required to fill the vacant jobs that men were living as they were

being recruited in the military. Lots of different advertisements were used to persuade them to

seek for the jobs in the factories, and also to assist in the military in case of labor shortages.

Women in Production

Production was critical to victory, and thus, women were significant to production.

Women had started responding to the agencies calls to join the labor force. Some women even

joined the army because they felt that if the members of their families were in the battle field,

then they were also in the fight. Additionally, factories changed their ways of production as they

retooled for the production of war equipments3. New equipments extremely increased the

industrial output as women played an important part of the workforce. Factories started

producing nets for camouflage rather than lingerie; field carts for carrying hospital foods rather

than baby carriages; bomb fuses rather than lipsticks; parachutes rather than the silk and ribbon

goods; hand grenades rather than beer cans; and gas masks rather than vacuum cleaners. Women

became production militias. They kept the country moving by perfectly doing the jobs that were

customarily reserved for men.

3 Holt, Jennifer. The Ideal Woman. Retrieved from

https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/honors/documents/journals/soundings/Holt.pdf
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Previously, females always experienced resistance and resentment from the foremen, and

male managers of the production plants. Resistance was specifically strong in the custom-bound

industry for building ships4. However, women started winning the skeptical managers. A

publication by the government towards the end of 1942 indicated that shipyards were virtually

undivided in reporting that women performed well at the work places just like men. In fact,

foremen usually discovered that females were quicker to gain knowledge than the available

males. They also showed a better concentration than did the males, and were concerned to know

how and why.

Women in the Military

Women also joined the military as armed forces and nurse corps to make it easier for

additional men to be sent into war. Additionally, women leaders assisted in the determination of

the results of the war, as well as the peace that came afterwards. Women were also encouraged to

join various professions within the military. Several women went to Washington D.C to assist

manage the rapidly increasing federal government, and also participate behind the combats in the

war struggle. Moreover, over three hundred and fifty thousand women were recruited into the

armed services, serving abroad and at home. The womens groups and Eleanor Roosevelt urged

women to enroll in the army after they were impressed by the Britains use of women in the

military. Congress set up the Auxiliary Army Corps of Women in 1942 that was upgraded to the

Army Corps Army that had a full status of the military5. Its members worked in over two

hundred non-combatant works stateside, and in all the corners of the war. By 1945, there were

4 Holt, Jennifer.

5 Holt, Jennifer.
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close to six thousand female officers, as well as over a hundred thousand Womens Auxiliary

Army. In the Navy, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) members held

a similar eminence as marine reservists and offered assistance stateside. The Coast Guard and

Marine Corps before long followed suit, albeit in smaller figures.

Womens Air force Service Pilots (WASP) provided one of the least recognized tasks that

women carried out in the war struggle. Such females, each of whom had already acquired their

license of being a pilot before the service, were the first to fly the military aircraft in America6.

They shipped planes from the factories to the military bases, they participated in the simulation

target and strafing missions and cargo transportation, as well as amassing over sixty million

miles in air travel distances. The women also freed thousands of the American male pilots for

active duty in the Second World War. More than a thousand members of WASPs worked in the

military camps, though a considerable number of them demised during the war. Regarded as the

employees of the civil service that lacked the formal military status, the fallen women pilots were

never granted the military benefits and honors. However, the country had to wait until 1977 that

the women pilots in the military got full status of the armed forces. In 2010, at the Capitol

ceremony, the WASPs got the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest honors for the

civilians. Over two hundred former pilots were in attendance, with several of them wearing their

Second World War era uniforms.

Womens Roles in the Community and at their Homes

Women had numerous roles both in the community and at their homes. In the community,

females collected blood, raised money for the battle bonds, assisted in civil defense, rolled

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bandages, hosted troops, and tended Victory Gardens7. In their homes, they raised their children,

recycled the materials that were considered scarce, mourned their men who died in war, and also

dealt with the rationing strains.

For the majority of the American women, the sacrifices they made during the Second

World War brought to them new opportunities, new skills, and new jobs. The secret weapon at

the time was the females who willingly assembled to meet any kind of challenge. The American

industries and government rapidly expanded to meet the needs of the war because of the

womens labor.

Women in the Aircraft Industry

As women continued to work in various positions that had previously been closed to

them, the industry of aviation experienced the greatest growth because of the women workers. In

1943, over three hundred and ten thousand females worked in the United States air craft industry,

representing sixty-five percent of the total workforce of the industry compared to one percent in

the years before the war8. The industry that dealt with weapons also employed female workers,

as represented by the propaganda campaign that was carried out by Rosie the Riveter of the

United States government. Based in a tiny section on a real-life weapons worker, though

critically a fabricated character, the robust, bandana-clad Rosie turned into one of the most

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8 McEuen, Melissa A.
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triumphant tools of recruitment in the history of America, as well as the most iconic reflection of

the working females during the Second World War.

Campbell reviews the experiences of women by examining the histories of Spars, Waves,

Wacs, civilian war workers, and the military nurses. She narrates that women faced hostilities

within the military and union hierarchies as they tried to get to the higher ranks despite the

numerous advertisements that encouraged them to join the labor force. They were reluctantly

accepted as temporary replacements to hold the management positions as some men still had the

perception that women were fit for the home tasks, as well as other community services. She

emphasizes that only the war nurses gained command over men and became in charge of their

profession, whereas the rest of the women employees in other fields were being dictated upon

and prejudiced against by their male superiors9. The wages and salaries they earned were much

lower than the male workers whom they worked with in the same occupations. Campbells book

narrates the history of the armed forces wives at the time of war and the stay at home mothers, as

well as the incorporation of the history of the two groups with the women workers who were

being paid. Women, particularly, mothers and wives, got into and out of the war work force on a

monthly basis to attend to their home duties as well. Campbell writes that the war had heavy

obligations on the females, but it never marked a radical break with their sex roles, or the

customary working arrangements.

The Second World War transformed America drastically though not usually in

straightforward and expected ways. Rosie the Riveter fighting for equality at the places of work

9Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era. (Harvard
University Press, 1984), 17
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was an incomplete image. By 1944, over nineteen million females had jobs in which, they were

being paid10. However, two-thirds of women worked at their homes, and polls indicated that

though some females disliked being forced to live their places of work between 1945 and 1946,

most of them had the feeling that it was not a hardship to go back home. It is also imperative to

note that the elite customary men professions like political offices, senior businesses, medicine,

and law were preserved for the white men.

Honey writes that the contribution of the African-American females in every aspect of the

home-front work at the time of the Second World War was evident. However, newsreels,

employment posters, and advertisements showed to a larger extent that white women were

getting jobs as workers at the defense plants, army nurses, steadfast wives, and concerned

mothers. Such a variety of white employees left for posterity pictures like Rosie the Riveter,

blurring the contributions that were made by the African-America women to the war struggle.

Honey corrects such a distorted image of the roles of women in the Second World War by

collecting poetry, fiction, essays, and photos about and by the Black women from the four

leading wartime periodicals of the African-American. The periodicals include The Crisis, Negro

Digest, Negro Story, and Opportunity.

Lots of the publications featuring for the first time since they got publicized in the book,

Bitter Fruit, show the African-American women working in the armed forces uniforms,

operating the machines that look technical, pursuing education, and entertaining audiences. The

publications applaud the accomplishments made by the Black women as pioneers working

10 McEuen, Melissa A.
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towards attaining racial equality11. The poetry and fiction depict women character engaged in

tasks that are not just domestic duties. Additionally, the poetry and fiction voice the concerns of

bitterness arising as a result of the racial prejudice that several females felt. Such an anthology

has works that have been written by over a hundred writers, most of whom are African-

Americans. Of specific note are short stories and poems anthologized for the very first time such

as the first story by Ann Perry, the last fiction work by Octavia Wynbush, as well as the three

poems that were written by Georgia Douglass Johnson of the Harlem Renaissance. Uniting such

different authors was their aspiration to write in the middle of a universal armed forces

disagreement with theatrical possibility for bringing segregation to an end, as well as opening

opportunities for the females who were engaged in domestic duties. Conventional anthologies of

the literature by the Black persons run from the Harlem Renaissance period to the 1960s with no

or little reference to the years in between. Bitter Fruit is a book that not only sheds light on the

literature of such periods, but it also presents a picture of the racial prejudice that was enhanced

by the white community against the African-American women regarding employments.

Though the war opened career and job opportunities for the white females, black females

experienced just the insignificant improvements in their tasks as the domestics of the country.

They were demoted to the least desirable, dirtiest, and most precarious works just like their

Black men12. Bitter Fruit narrates that despite the fact that white females looked forward to a

return to their domestic roles after the war, the future of the African-American females looked

11 Honey, Maureen. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II, 1945. (University
of Missouri Press, 1999), 23.

12 Honey, Maureen.
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uncertain. Blacks continued to go through racial discrimination at home despite their

participation in nation building, and defending America in the battle grounds. The books

collection shows the services and sacrifices that were offered by the African-Americans in the

middle of a sustained prejudice.

There is no existence of any documented article that shows that the black females offered

their services to the military in the American Revolution13. However, it is assumed that they

might have offered their services alongside the African-American males. It is also assumed that

the services that the Black females offered during the war included domestic duties in the home

settings, laundering, nursing the wounded soldiers, and cooking for the men in combat. Such

duties paid less as compared to what the white women were earning as they worked in factories,

as well as in the military. The Black females obtained jobs in the military and the factories

because of their enlisted Black men, but not because of the governments advertisements.

Additionally, Black women were paid by the white farmers to do manual jobs in their

plantations.

Conclusion

To conclude, the entry of America into the Second World War changed the perception of

the social and political leaders regarding the roles of women in the society. The American

industries were threatened by the shortage of labor as many men were recruited into the military,

and thus, there was the need to employ women to replace the vacancies that were left by the men.

Despite the racial prejudice allegations against the Black women, both the white and the black

13 McEuen, Melissa A.
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females played essential roles during the Second World War as they worked in the factories, and

also in the military.

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Works Cited

Campbell, D'Ann. 1984. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era. Harvard

University Press.

Holt, Jennifer. The Ideal Woman. Retrieved from

https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/honors/documents/journals/soundings/Holt.pdf

Honey, Maureen. 1999. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II, 1945. University

of Missouri Press.

McEuen, Melissa A. 2016. Women, Gender, and World War II. American History Journal. DOI:

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.55