Rosie The Riveter Summary

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A Film Analysis of Intersectionality and Gender Binary Thinking in The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) by Connie Field

This film study will define the intersectionality of race and gender roles that defined the ability of women to “men’s jobs” during World War II in The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) by Connie Field. In this film many women from the lower and middle classes tended to work in factories or they have been domestic servants in the home. In Field’s film, women from primarily lower-middle class backgrounds (also unmarried0 found an economic opportunity to get paid higher wages for doing “men’s work” in the production of wartime products, such as airplanes, tanks, and other forms of weaponry.
These economic …show more content…

In many cases, lower class women were able to get much higher wages, which enabled them to leave behind domestic service jobs that paid them much less. More so, the racialization of “domestic servitude” was primarily placed onto people of color, since African Americans were racially marginalized by white racism in the labor market. In one interview done by Fields, Lyn Childs defines the problem of gender binary thinking, which alienated women from “men’s work” in the industrial manufacturing sector of the American …show more content…

Childs’ important “opportunity” comes in being able to work in a non-racialized environment, but more importantly, it provided working class women with a higher wage in order to free them from Middle class servitude as domestic servants in the patriarchal household. In this manner, the white female workers of WWII factories were able to escape low paying jobs, but at the same time, they were able to avoid the pitfalls of domestic servitude in the domestic sphere of middle class