Women in WWII
Hannah Mangan - Anthony
How did women in the United States impact WWII?
Women during WWII supported the war effort by working on the home front or serving.
Flying industry
The plane flying industry saw a big increase in female workers. 310,000 women worked in the aircraft industry in 1943. Rosie the Riveter was a campaign used to get more women to start working. Rosie was one of the most successful recruitment tools in history. Rosie was in everything, movies, newspapers, posters, photographs, and articles. Rosie was created to get women to enter the workforce. It did and in huge numbers. Female workers rarely earned more then 50% of male wages.
Campaign Posters
Some women had to make campaign posters about the war. They would have a master poster in the background and the women would copy down the master poster. The reason they did this was to make sure that people knew about this. This way they have many posters to hang around town.
Married women and work
Married women with children almost never entered the workforce. The mothers were scared to leave their children. The FWA (Federal Works Agency) spent $50 million on daycare's, so that these mothers can start working. Most of these daycare's were barley half full. Married couples decided not to send their children to daycare's and have their young children be babysat by nonworking family members.
African American working women
In 1941, 40% to 50% of black women were working. They worked as maids and cooks. These jobs were both very poor paying. Black women in the United States worked too. They worked as maids and cooks.
The WAAC and WASPs
350,000 women joined armed forces (home and abroad) Some people supported the idea of women workforce. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9DVNHeEoEvaUmdkNk4taGVKa3c/view (Made with my little brother Ryan) (Voiceover of the rest of the paragraph so there's not a lot of reading)
Commanders change their minds about women
400,000 Women served in Armed Forces. A number bigger the the total male troop in 1939. The women enrolled to free some of the men from the war, but then they would have to do what the women were doing on the homefront. Some of the commanders who didn't think women should be in the war started accepting and asked them for more. General Eisenhower told the Congress that when they started the women's units "I was violently against it." He then went on to fight for a permanent place for the women in the armed forces.
How the women got into work
Alberta Kennie was in the Navy as a secretary. After Pearl Harbor, they needed people to ferry the planes around. The planes were being built so fast and they needed to have people move them from the factory to the point of their embarkation. Alberta had a basic pilot license and 30 hours of flying time. They were forced to close the WASPs program before the war ended. The sad thing was that the WASPs were forgotten after the war ended. These women are the first American woman to fly the planes in the United States. Because there were so many planes they didn't have enough people to fly them. This is when they decided to let women fly the planes. Video below
Stats about the women
350,000 women served in the U.S. Armed forces. The male working labor had many gaps. From 1940 to 1945 the women workforce went up from 27% to 37%. In 1945 about 1 out of 4 married women worked outside of the home. There were 140,000 women in the Army, 100,000 in the Navy, 23,000 in the Marines, 13,000 in the Coast Guards, 1,000 in the Air Force, and 74,000 in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps.