Impact of WWII on the U.S. Economy

Gluck's oral history of the reminiscences of life and times of Rosie the Riveter focuses chiefly on the impact that the industrial work experience had on women who were recruited for factory jobs for the duration. However, certain insights into the personal experiences of such women lead to logical inferences about how the war effort made a significant impact, not only on the pool of labor available to economy capital, but also on other areas of the economy. The background for such an impact was the persistence of what today would be (and indeed is) called a deep recession, and the equal persistence of highly traditional, patriarchal cultural values: "On the eve of the war, the country was still recovering from the Great Depression. Unemployment rates, though reduced, remained high and the hostility toward married women working had not abated" (Gluck, 1987, p. 4). The Janus-like culture, in which economic necessity forced many women, willy nilly, into the work-seeking if not working labor force, even as the prevailing cultural norms