"Rosie the Riveter"

The documentary "Rosie the Riveter" by Connie Field and the book Rosie the Riveter Revisited by Sherna Berger Gluck refer to a period in American history that can be considered the beginning of a major shift in the role of women. During World War II, when millions of men were conscripted or voluntarily joined the armed forces, defense plants in the United States had to continue producing needed armaments and other goods for the war effort. At the time, relatively few women worked outside the home, and even fewer would have worked in factories like those producing airplanes and other military goods. This changed as a female work force was enlisted to see to it that production did not decrease in this time of emergency. The women who took these jobs found a new sense of accomplishment, freedom, and possibility, though when the war ended, most returned to their former lives as returning males took back their jobs. The issue addressed by the film and the book is how this consciousness-raising experience changed the lives of these women and perhaps changed society in the long run. In both the film and the book, women who worked in defense plants and who experienced this change in condition speak for themselves and tell the interviewers what they felt at the time, how their lives changed, and how they reacted to the end of the war and the end of their new-found independence.

Today, we continue to see changes in the role of women in the workplace, though the r

ies meant a real change in social conditions and the beginning of a new life--Fanny Christina Hill is a black woman for whom the change meant a dual opening of the workplace, to women and to blacks: The expansion of jobs in the defense industries, coupled with Roosevelt's executive order prohibiting discrimination in hiring, helped black women get out of the white women's kitchens (Gluck 24). Gluck describes Tina as a "very determined and willful woman" who "took advantage of every opportunity" (Gluck 25). This opportunity was more than a matter of consciousness-raising for Tina, for it gave her a real opportunity which lasted long after the war as she returned to work for North American after the war and continued there until 1980. At the same time, the change was not from non-work to work as it was for many white women, and so black women did not have the same options after the war, either: Well, we all know that the Negro woman was the first woman that left home to go to work. She's been working ever since because she had to work beside her husband in slavery--against her will. So she has always worked. She knows how to get out there and work (Gluck 49). The story told by Marye Stumph shows that many women were anxiou

Category: History - "