African American Women's Role In Ww2

The Second World War was the source of both destruction and change. While millions of soldiers fought and died in the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific, American women in the home front had experienced a newfound liberation. As the men left, the positions and jobs they held opened the opportunity for women to work. This changed the lives of women around the country as mothers and daughters could now earn a living. American women played a pivotal role in World War II, they were industrial workers, nurses, and caretakers. Women held the country together in the time of war and gave everything the had in the war effort. Not all American women were keen to the idea of leaving their homes to join the war labor force. “Many things might

“Half of the women who took war jobs were minority and lower-class women already in the workforce; many of them moved from lower-paying traditional jobs to higher paying worker jobs, although women were still paid only sixty percent of what men earned.”(Lerner, 2006, p.306). Even with the noticeably lower wages women were receiving compared to men, lower class women were eager to join the war time work force. African American women especially benefited from the widespread demand of workers, as it resulted in the reducing of employment discrimination, as employers would hire African American women due to all other laborers being unavailable. African American women nevertheless still experienced inequality in the booming workforce industry, they were given the least desirable and lowest paying jobs. The shift created by the war industry also created the opportunity for African Americans to move to cities. Between 1940 and 1944 the percentage of African American women working in factory jobs increased from 6.5 percent to 18 percent as the number of African American female farm workers diminished by half. (Nichols-Smith, 2010, p.167). The war production industry caused a migration from rural farming areas to cities due to the employment opportunities. African American women benefited from the higher pay in the war production industry as opposed to farming, they also experienced a

Stationed in the European and Pacific theaters, they tended to the wounds of soldiers that were both physical and psychological. “During World War II nearly sixty thousand American nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps(ANC).”(Bigelow, Feldman, Slovey, Howes, 2000, p. 159). Conditions in frontlines were not favorable, and there was a shortage in nurses to tend to the injuries of war. “Accustomed to a ration of one nurse to 10 patients, these women found themselves attempting to care for 200 of 300 apiece...Patients came in by the hundreds, and the doctors and nurses worked continuously under the tents amid the flies and heat and dust.” (Weatherford, 1990, p.3). Although they themselves were in danger of the enemy's attack, the nurses worked selflessly in overcrowded field hospitals, ships, and planes. Their hard work commitment these women had toward their service as nurses made for the the saving of thousands of American lives. As the last life line many injured soldiers had American nurses played an extremely important role in the Second World