Rosie The Riveter Essay

Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of the United States. She represents the American women who took the jobs of the men during world war 2. They sometimes got entirely different jobs because the spot needed filled. Rosie the Riveter is used as a symbol of feminism and women?s economic power. The world wars were total wars that required governments to utilize their entire populations to defeat the enemies. This meant that millions of women were encouraged to work in industry and take over jobs previously done by men. Both world wars were similar in these ways because most of the men went to war. Nearly 19 million women held jobs during world was 2. Many of these women were already working before the war. Only three million new female workers

entered the workforce during the time of the war. Although most women took on male dominated trades during World War II, they were expected to return to their everyday housework once men returned from the war. Government campaigns targeting women were addressed solely at housewives, likely because already-employed women would move to the higher paid jobs on their own or perhaps because it was assumed that most would be housewives. There was a lot of propaganda to get these women in the work force.

In 1944, when victory seemed assured for the United States, government-sponsored propaganda changed by urging women back to working in the home. Later, many women returned to traditional work. However, some of these women continued working in the factories. Rosie the Riveter was first used in 1942 in a song of the same name written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. The song was recorded by numerous artists, including the popular big band leader Kay Kyser, and it became a national hit. The song portrays Rosie as a tireless assembly line worker, who earned a Production E doing her part to help the American war effort. The name is said to be a nickname for Rosie Bonavita who was working for Convair in San Diego, California. The idea of Rosie resembled Veronica Foster, a real person who in 1941 was Canada's poster girl for women in the war effort in Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl. Rosie the Riveter inspired a social movement that increased the number of working American women from 12 million to 20 million by 1944. By 1944 only 1.7 million unmarried men between the ages of 20 and 34 worked in the defense industry, while 4.1 million unmarried women between those ages did

so. Although the image of Rosie the Riveter reflected the industrial work of welders and riveters during World War II, the majority of working women filled non-factory positions in every sector of the economy. What unified the experiences of these women was that they proved to themselves that they could do a man's job and could do it well. African American women were some of those most affected by the need for women workers. It has been said that it was the process of whites working along blacks during the time that encouraged a breaking down of social barriers and a healthy recognition of diversity.