Rosie The Riveter Propaganda

Imagine: you are walking your dog down the street for your evening walk. However, even this peaceful moment of your day is interrupted by posters on telephone poles and neon signs in shop windows that try to pique your interest in new products or ideas. Persuasive ads are everywhere in the world around us today. However, not unlike modern times, propaganda was used in the 1940s to persuade audiences and change opinions. “Rosie the Riveter” is a poster created during the time of World War II, and it attempts to persuade women to join the workforce and replace the men fighting in the war. According to some historians, “between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945

The poster displays the text “We Can Do It!” (Rockwell). This caption displays to the audience that women can do the jobs men can do. In turn, this also emphasizes that every woman can become a “Rosie” during wartime through the use of the word “we” instead of “you.” By grouping “Rosie” with all other women in America, the public is able to recognize that anyone can become “Rosie” even though she is presented as an authority figure. This presents women with the idea that they, too, can become authority figures and help the war effort, just like “Rosie.” In grouping the general population with Rosie, this presents women the opportunity to mold their own way of life into one more like

In this argument, historians may consider Rockwell’s poster to be merely a drop in the bucket of the multitude of propaganda circulating during wartime. In this case, “Rosie the Riveter’s” poster may have just been produced during the time when society was making a change, and may not have actually started the changing of women’s lifestyles. However, the poster could still have been made “in the right time and place for an argument,” or the rhetorical situation of kairos (Alfano and O’Brien 75). This would be because a series of events was taking place during World War II that allowed women to gain more authority in the workplace. Therefore, Rockwell’s poster may have just been created at the right time and place for it to become “perhaps the most iconic image of working women during the war”