Rosie the Riveter: Women Working During World War II

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Women have always worked

Women have always worked inside and outside the home. Before industrialization, all women, except the most elite, worked on the family farm and anywhere else work needed to be done. With the start of the industrial revolution, minority and lower-class women started working outside the home. These women, though, still had to care for the home, which was not considered work. While there was a rise in female paid employment in the 1910s, the public did not notice until the 1920s when young, white, middle-class women starting working (Rupp 55).

The Depression changed female employment patterns. Both women and men denounced the women who worked outside the home. Men accused them of stealing their jobs and their ability to support their families. Despite this prevailing attitude, some married women had no choice but to work outside the home. Many people, however, thought that women worked in order to have extra spending money or because they wanted their own career (Rupp 61).

In 1936, more than 80% of Americans believed that women should not work if their husbands had a job and laws were proposed that would prohibit married women from working. In addition, both women and men agreed that married women should give up their jobs if their husbands wanted them to (Gluck 8). These attitudes reflect ideas about women’s proper place and not of the job market. Women and men had different jobs: women worked in the service industries, which expanded during the Depression, and men worked in the heavy manufacturing industries, which contracted (Gluck 8). Even as unemployment declined, people’s attitudes about women’s proper place remained strong.

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