Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter
Rosie the Riveter was created as a tool of U.S. propaganda to recruit women into the workplace during World War II (1941–1945) as men were mobilized for the war. Although riveting is used in aircraft production, the name was used to label all female factory workers in defense industries during the war. Though Rosie was a fictional character, she became associated with several real women. The popular 1942 song of that name written by John Jacob Loeb and Redd Evans and recorded by Kay Kyser supposedly was based on Rosalind P. Walter. Norman Rockwell's rendition of Rosie on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943, was modeled after the postal worker Mary Doyle. Most famously, Rose Munroe, a widow and the mother of two, was recruited from her riveting job at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Michigan to encourage the purchase of war bonds in filmed ads.
The poster image now associated with Rosie the Riveter, featuring a woman in factory uniform flexing her bicep and asserting, "We Can Do It!" was created by J. Howard Miller in 1942 for the Westinghouse War Production Coordinating Committee and was based on a photograph taken of the Michigan factory worker Geraldine Doyle. The woman in the poster came to be known as Rosie the Riveter and remains emblematic of the women who worked in the defense industry during the war. Rosie wears mascara, lipstick, and nail polish and remains a "woman" even as she performs masculine work. The continued power and appeal of the poster lie in its combined depiction of traditional understandings of feminine beauty with strength and competency rather than weakness and assertiveness rather than submissiveness. Despite Rosie's radically progressive appearance, the poster adheres to tradition. The assertion "We Can Do It!" is reminiscent of the cheer "You Can Do It!" and the traditional cheerleading role of women during wartime, encouraging men to fight and be "men." The "We" refers not just to women who can do men's work but to men and women who can win the war together. The propaganda work of Rosie the Riveter was directed toward society as a whole, and in the context of war women's work in nontraditional spheres was encouraged and applauded.
Around eighteen million Rosies, six million of whom were first-time workers, filled positions left vacant by men mobilized for war and positions newly created in the defense industry after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The U.S. economy and military depended on the labor Rosies provided. Women worked in factories for a variety of reasons, but patriotism was the most frequently highlighted motivation in popular depictions of working women. In fact, the positions generally paid better, required training, and were more interesting and challenging than the work previously and subsequently available to women. The wartime economy offered unprecedented opportunities to African-American women in particular.
The wartime positions and wages Rosies enjoyed ended when men returned from war. Birth rates rose dramatically immediately after the war, and many middle-class women willingly became full-time homemakers. However, many working-class women lost their positions and were forced to search for less lucrative work. Many historians claim that in this sense the progress made by Rosies during the war was an anomaly. However, scholars who have recorded the oral histories of Rosies have discovered that even though the progress was temporary, many women left their wartime jobs with greater self-confidence, pride, and self-worth. For the first time in such large numbers, women proved to themselves and to American society that they were capable of doing "men's" work. In addition, Rosie the Riveter's period of success supplied inspiration to the later women's movement. As a strong, self-sufficient working woman appreciated and celebrated as a national heroine for her contributions to society, Rosie the Riveter's image and claim that "We Can Do It!" persevered as a useful and inspiring image for the women's movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gluck, Sherna Berger. 1987. Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change. Boston: Twayne.
Honey, Maureen. 1984. Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Rosie the Riveter: World War II/Home Front National Historical Park. 2006. Available from http://www.rosietheriveter.org.
Susan L. Solomon