Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T16:28:16.703Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gender and Wartime Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jordynn Jack
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During World War II, women were heavily recruited for scientific and technical jobs across the united states. Many assumed roles previously allotted to men, serving as welders, riveters, sheet metal workers, crane operators, ship fitters, and chauffeurs, to name just a few. Between 1941 and 1944, over 6.5 million women joined the workforce; over 10 million were already working outside the home in 1941 (Pidgeon vi). The Brooklyn Naval Yard, featured in Manhattan Beach as the workplace of Anna, Nell, and their friends, also saw an increase in women workers, albeit a somewhat modest one. By 1944, according to The New York Times, women represented 4,000 of the 65,000 workers at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, not counting office workers (“Women Help Build Carrier”). While women represented just 6% of the industrial labor force at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, women represented 11.5% of all shipyard workers in 1944, according to the United States Department of Labor (Hirshfield 481).

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 134 , Issue 2 , March 2019 , pp. 398 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Baker, Laura Nelson. Wanted: Women in War Industry. E.P. Dutton and Company, 1943.Google Scholar
Cooper, Patricia, and Oldenziel, Ruth. “Cherished Classifications: Bathrooms and the Construction of Gender/Race on the Pennsylvania Railroad during World War II”. Feminist Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 1999, pp. 7–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cucullu, Lois. “Exceptional Women, Expert Culture, and the Academy”. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 29, no. 1, Sept. 2003, pp. 27–54, doi:10.1086/375674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Emily C. “Defense Fashions”. The Science NewsLetter, vol. 40, no. 3, 1941, pp. 38–45.Google Scholar
Egan, Jennifer. Manhattan Beach. Simon and Schuster, 2017.Google Scholar
“First Women Hired in Navy Yard Shops”. The New York Times, 14 Sept. 1942, p. 1.Google Scholar
Glamour Girls of 1943. Office of War Information, 1943.Google Scholar
Glover, Katherine. Women at Work in Wartime. Public Affairs Committee, 1943.Google Scholar
Hirshfield, Deborah Scott. “Women Shipyard Workers in the Second World War: A Note”. The International History Review, vol. 11, no. 3, 1989, pp. 478–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honey, Maureen. Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II. U of Massachusetts P, 1984.Google Scholar
Lapin, Eva. Mothers in Overalls. Worker's Library Publishers, 1943.Google Scholar
Laughlin, Kathleen A. Women's Work and Public Policy: A History of the Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, 1945–1970. Northeastern UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Leuck, Miriam Simons. Fields of Work for Women. D. Appleton and Company, 1926.Google Scholar
Miklos, Josephine von. I Took a War Job. Simon and Schuster, 1943.Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth. Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II. U of Illinois P, 1987.Google Scholar
Miller, Carolyn R. “Aristotle's ‘Special Topics’ in Rhetorical Practice and Pedagogy”. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 1, 1987, pp. 61–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oldenziel, Ruth. Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women and Modern Machines in America, 1870–1945. Amsterdam UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Olson, Christa J. “Performing Embodiable Topoi: Strategic Indigeneity and the Incorporation of Ecuadorian National Identity”. Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 96, no. 3, 2010, pp. 300–23, doi:10.1080/00335630.2010.499108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patnode, Stephen R. “Keep It under Your Hat: Safety Campaigns and Fashion in the World War II Factory”. The Journal of American Culture, vol. 35, no. 3, 2012, pp. 231–43.10.1111/j.1542-734X.2012.00810.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, Anne. “First Girls at Navy Yard Like Their Jobs as Helpers”. The New York Times, 20 Sept. 1942, p. D4.Google Scholar
Pidgeon, Mary Elizabeth. Changes in Women's Employment during the War Women's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, 1944.Google Scholar
“Uniform Designed by Couturier Here Now Adorns Women Drivers of Buses”. The New York Times, 9 Jan. 1943, p. 16.Google Scholar
United States Department of Labor. When You Hire Women. Government Printing Office, 1944.Google Scholar
Wise, Nancy Baker, and Wise, Christy. A Mouthful of Rivets. Jossey-Bass, 1994.Google Scholar
“Women Are Classified for Factory Jobs in Three Groups in War Industries”. The New York Times, 6 May 1942, p. 16.Google Scholar
“Women Help Build Carrier for Navy”. The New York Times, 5 June 1944, p. 16.Google Scholar
“Women in Industry.” Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017693538/.Google Scholar