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Rosie The Riveter Thesis

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The most iconic image of working women during World War ll, Rosie the Riveter was the face of a campaign that was working to recruit female workers for various defense industries for the war. The industry that the campaign was centered around was aviation, they were placed in the US aircraft industry in hopes to help the US army in the war. As the majority of men had left to serve in the war, there were gaping holes left in the American workforce that had to be filled. With the plethora of jobs available, women– even married women– were now encouraged to get jobs.
Rosie the Riveter is the quintessential figure of working women, especially in the mid-1900s. Her true identity is not known, however, the inspiration for her is assumed to be one …show more content…

Years earlier, during the Great Depression, women were discouraged from getting jobs so that the few jobs that were available could go to men. However, when World War ll started, the governement now wanted women to start entering the workforce. They created the Rosie the Riveter campaign to try and entice women into getting jobs. In one version of the Rosie the Riveter poster, she was standing on a copy of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s political rulebook. The message this sent out to women was essentially that although men were on the frontlines doing the physical fighting, women were also doing their part to defeat the enemy and help people. The poster of Rosie the Riveter was changed slightly from the original one because the first is far more masculine, something no one wanted to see in a women in the 1940s. The new poster “appealed to the sense of patriotism and common goal of the Second World War while showing that women could retain their femininity and womanhood in their service” (Hawkes). The message was “We Can Do It!”, referring to how women were wanted and valued in the workplace. This was a message never before seen in modern society, especially not seen when targeted towards married women. This was in fact so unheard of, that “World War II was the first time in U.S. history married women outnumbered single women workers” (Hawkes). Also, by 1944, 1 in 3 defense workers were former full time

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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

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Historiography Individual Books This source, Creating Rosie the Riveter, is a monograph written by Maureen Honey, which describes how during the 1940s, due to the need to fill jobs normally held by men, who were mostly enlisted overseas, the US government turned to its women and tried to persuade them to apply for jobs in factories, production, and management through propaganda, such as advertisements, pulp fiction, and magazines. It also examines how the image of Rosie the riveter was formed through propaganda and why, as well as why the propaganda turned back towards traditional images of women, such as the housewife and mother image, when the war came to an end. In terms of the argument, the author argues that propaganda was used

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So, women and minorities began working in the factories because the men were leaving for the Second World War. The United States of America was changing. To boost morale on the hard day at the factories, the women looked to figures like “ Rosie the Riveter “ and “ Wendy the Welder “ in Document One. They had catchphrases like “ We Can Do It! “ to keep their spirit high and keep working to win the World War Two.

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The second World War resulted in a demand for workers after men began leaving for the war. Due to a lot of the working men in America going overseas as well as the demand for war products, women became a major source of labor. Propaganda began to address women, persuading them that it was their duty to start working for the men. The film The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter gives personal accounts of some of the hardships women faced in the era surrounding WWII, and how the media was used to create a desire for women to work.

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The Real Rosie: How Women Actually Lived during World War II Rosie the Riveter was a symbol of the public, representing a super feminine working woman. However, what was portrayed to the public was false. The Rosies were actually a diverse group of hard-working women that went through many challenges. The Rosies worked determinedly in the factories because the income was good and they could sustain a healthy family. Factory life may have seemed like all fun and games and safe for women, which was shown to the public by the Wartime Manpower Commission.

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Women were able to prove that they were just as capable as men in the workplace, and this opened up new opportunities for women in the workforce. Rosie the Riveter remains an important symbol of women's empowerment to this day. Her legacy has inspired countless women to pursue careers in male-dominated fields and to fight for equality and representation in the workforce. While there are valid criticisms of Rosie the Riveter as a rhetorical device, her impact on women's involvement in the workforce during World War II cannot be understated, and her legacy continues to inspire women around the

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One of their accomplishments was getting women to work in factories using propaganda posters such as Rosie the Riveter. Rosie showed that women can be as strong as men and still be feminine and beautiful, as shown in her famous flex pose(Olsen). The amount of women joining local plants and factories led women into joining the military to do jobs in areas like the medical field, technology field, and many others. The emotional appeal of this would be empowerment and feminism because with the help of Rosie the Riveter, gender roles had begun to diminish and women started to stray from the stereotypical image of a housewife. The logical appeal of this poster is the factual information and the Army Forces logo displayed on the poster.

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People were afraid of that happening again and since there were so many spots to fill in factories after most men went to fight, most women who were already working went to work in the factories. That left a lot of “civilian jobs” without people to do them. So, Rockwell was encouraged to draw another recruitment girl, this one however was depicted several times in several different uniforms (“Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War Two”). For example, she was most commonly dressed as a nurse or a mechanic (“Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War Two”). Sadly, this recruitment girl lived in Rosie’s shadow and did not do nearly as well as Rosie did.

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In the bottom right-hand corner of the advertisement the words, "War Production Co-Operating Committee" can be seen in bold, white letters. Although the woman in the photo is known as Rosie the Riveter, she was a symbol of a women’s movement rather than one specific woman. The United States Government began the "Rosie the Riveter Campaign" to persuade women to join the workforce. The United States began this movement after men left for war during World War II. With a majority of the working population away, the government was in desperate need of a supplemental work force.

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Increased spending by the federal government, totaling about $321 billion, was used to ramp up war production. Escalating war production, in turn, virtually eliminated the massive unemployment that had plagued the nation during the Great Depression, as previously unemployed workers could either enlist in the military or take jobs in defense industries. In fact, unemployment decreased from nearly 15% in 1940 to an all-time low of 1% in 1944. At the same time, wages increased; adjusted for inflation, weekly wages in manufacturing rose by more than 50% from 1940 to 1945. As a result, many Americans were afforded the opportunity to save money and engage in leisure activities, and, indeed, many bought books and magazines, purchased recordings of popular songs, and made weekly trips to the movies, further increasing overall spending and the health of the economy.

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The iconic figure of women working in shipyards and factories came to term as Rosie The Riveter during World War II when women were encouraged and praised for working in place of the men who fought for the country. It was not only the men fighting who helped win the war for the allies, the women working to build the fighter planes and other war machines were victorious on the home front. Throughout the 1940’s, propaganda posters were widely used to promote patriotism in war efforts whether it was to get more men to fight in the war or it was to get women to fill in the shoes of the men. The famous propaganda poster of Rosie The Riveter was used to promote the bravery and strength of women workers, the famous caption being “we can do it” to

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As a result of so many men in the military, there was no one to run the factories so the woman stepped up and took their places. Woman would work in factories, shipyards and some even worked in the army, airforce, or navy all while trying to balance their home life for their children (Doc. 1). Nearly 350,000 women served their country in this way (OI). Rosie the Riveter was a fictional character on a poster stating “We Can Do It!” at the top of the poster and her flexing in a worker's uniform with a bandana on.

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The symbolic icon of Rosie the Riveter contributed greatly to women joining the workforce in the United States during World War II, later becoming a symbol of female empowerment. Women were no longer considered the typical housewife; she was now the working wife as nearly one-fourth of married women worked outside the home (History). These women who started working during World War II were referred to as “Rosies,” hence, the name Rosie the Riveter (Alchin). Rosie was a symbol representing the women who worked during war times (Sanders).

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To gain their support, the public image of women had to be changed. More propaganda was produced, encouraging women to enter the workforce as a way to continue the progression of the United States as their men went off to fight. Propaganda targeted towards women usually consisted of an emotional tone rather than an authoritative one. “To mobilize women… government propaganda needed… central theme… concentrated on patriotism and emotional appeals” (Mathis). It was known by the government that the best way to persuade women into aiding the war effort was to appeal to their emotions; women were angry that their loved ones were forced to go off to war to partake in a fight that was believed America had no need to be in.

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More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry. One example is Rosie the Riveter, she was mostly known for helping the United States to recruit women to work. (document 1) She was in newspapers, movies, posters, photographs, and articles. Rosie the Riveter represents the American women who worked in factories and

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