Rosie the Riveter was a symbol created to spur women to do their part in supporting the American war effort on the home front who evolved through the years into a cultural icon to stand for Women’s rights and feminist efforts. Rosie reflects the conflicts and spirit of her time through her profession as a wartime riveter. She represents the housewives, secretaries, and childcare workers who were called to the factories during the war. She now represents a generation of “Rosie’s,” the women who worked in traditionally male-dominated fields during World War II. Although Rosie the Riveter did originate in posters, she has developed into her own character who represents women’s rights in the workplace and a generation of “Rosie’s” even today.
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Society quickly adopted the phrase as a nickname for women in men-dominated positions during the war. When the government enacted a campaign to enlist the help of women on the home front, they took advantage of the phrase. Later in 1942, Rosie was given a face when she appeared in a movie promoting war bonds. The character was played, coincidentally, by Rose Monroe, a riveter at the Willow Run aircraft factory in Michigan. Willow Run was a factory in Michigan that, at its peak during the war years, produced B-24 Liberator bombers at the astounding rate of one airplane every hour! Then Rosie achieved her most notable form in 1943 when Norman Rockwell created a cover for the Saturday Evening Post, a picture that inspired posters proclaiming a message of women empowerment. One of these posters was a work by Pittsburgh artist, J. Howard Miller. Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a series of posters promoting the war effort. One of these posters became the famous “We Can Do It!” image. The image was not originally intended to be Rosie specifically; it was actually based on a United Press photograph taken of Michigan factory worker Geraldine Doyle to help recruit women to join the workforce. It was only later, around the 1970s and 1980s that the poster was rediscovered and became famous as “Rosie the Riveter.” John Reynolds, …show more content…
Between 1940 and 1944, the number of women in the workplace increased by 57 percent. This brought the number of working women in America up to 20 million (Milgram 5)! After the war, even though a majority of women reported through surveys that they wanted to keep their jobs, many were fired due to men returning home and by the decreased demand for war materials(Kessler-Harris 165). The nation that needed their help in a time of crisis quickly pushed women back into their roles as household managers, just as inferior to men as they were prior to their tremendous actions during WWII. Although society was not yet ready for greater gender equality, women’s wartime experience laid the groundwork for their steadily increasing participation in wage labor thereafter, and it planted the seeds of the women 's liberation movement of the
Society quickly adopted the phrase as a nickname for women in men-dominated positions during the war. When the government enacted a campaign to enlist the help of women on the home front, they took advantage of the phrase. Later in 1942, Rosie was given a face when she appeared in a movie promoting war bonds. The character was played, coincidentally, by Rose Monroe, a riveter at the Willow Run aircraft factory in Michigan. Willow Run was a factory in Michigan that, at its peak during the war years, produced B-24 Liberator bombers at the astounding rate of one airplane every hour! Then Rosie achieved her most notable form in 1943 when Norman Rockwell created a cover for the Saturday Evening Post, a picture that inspired posters proclaiming a message of women empowerment. One of these posters was a work by Pittsburgh artist, J. Howard Miller. Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a series of posters promoting the war effort. One of these posters became the famous “We Can Do It!” image. The image was not originally intended to be Rosie specifically; it was actually based on a United Press photograph taken of Michigan factory worker Geraldine Doyle to help recruit women to join the workforce. It was only later, around the 1970s and 1980s that the poster was rediscovered and became famous as “Rosie the Riveter.” John Reynolds, …show more content…
Between 1940 and 1944, the number of women in the workplace increased by 57 percent. This brought the number of working women in America up to 20 million (Milgram 5)! After the war, even though a majority of women reported through surveys that they wanted to keep their jobs, many were fired due to men returning home and by the decreased demand for war materials(Kessler-Harris 165). The nation that needed their help in a time of crisis quickly pushed women back into their roles as household managers, just as inferior to men as they were prior to their tremendous actions during WWII. Although society was not yet ready for greater gender equality, women’s wartime experience laid the groundwork for their steadily increasing participation in wage labor thereafter, and it planted the seeds of the women 's liberation movement of the