While women workers did exist before the war, there were limits on women workers preventing them from getting jobs. According to Claudia Goldin’s article “The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women’s Employment”, during pre-World War II, there was a law that states when a woman got married, she would be fired to give the position to a man. This left only single women working typical feminine jobs. In effect, the article states the largest increase of working women during the war came from the 45-54-year-old age group, as the young women already had jobs. In addition, the government labeled “married women without children under the age of ten as the best source of workers for the duration of the war" (qtd. Kossoudji and Dresser 432). Yet, …show more content…
As stated by Xiaojian Zhao’s article “Chinese American Women Defense Workers in World War II”, this was mostly due to Chinese-language newspapers advertising and calling women to work and the American mass media praising them as being friends of America, unlike the Japanese (140). Also, the author states that since they were fighting a war against fascist ideology and racism, in order to not seem hypocritical, the U.S. began to favor Chinese-Americans and allow them more jobs. Another motivation included the possibility of gaining United States citizenship. By participating in military service, immigrants would be granted their citizenship. As most Chinese-Americans living in Chinatown were immigrants that have not become citizens, this was a huge factor in bringing them to work. Although, they did not often frequent the same jobs many white women did. Zhao also explains that Chinese-American women in the California bay area would work in local factories and shipyards, or work small jobs such as in family-owned shops, where many children would start working from an early age. The article then continues to say that occasionally, Chinese-American women would work as garment workers, shrimp cleaners, and cannery workers, and yet, a typical Chinese-American woman’s job was at home taking care of her family, even during the peak of the war. The same patriarchal view of men taking care of work and going out to fight filled their minds and kept many women at