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

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toward stepping out of traditional cultural roles and working outside the home. In 1943, for example, a major publishing house produced a how-to book for women who might want to enter the workforce but who might not know how to go about it or what to expect inside it. The legacy of highly traditional cultural norms permeated such recruitment publications, but behind them was the expression of a definite economic need for a labor pool that had to be drawn from the available population. Before we bring the enemy to his knees this time, we're going to need the services of EVERY available woman and the sooner it is realized, that much sooner will we achieve victory! To build up our vast army, we will be forced to recruit women from homes, urban and rural . . . Women now employed in nonessential industries will have to change over to war work . . . ALL sources must be tapped (Herrick, 1943, p. 9). America's inevitable but forced entry into the war created a climate of economic crisis because of the massive numbers of men caught up by the military draft. The sense of crisis, coupled with declarations that the war economy had created increased opportunities for the full realization of women's equality, had the effect of drawing mi
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Approximate Word count = 3764
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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