Recruiting Rosie

As America entered WWII, the need for military supplies increased and American companies were urged to boast production levels of these important military materials for the war effort. At the same time millions of men left their jobs to serve in the military and these same manufacturers, as well as American farmers, and other U.S. businesses faced a real labor shortage. To help manufacturers to fulfill production contracts, while also keeping farms, offices and the country running, the government began strategizing ways to find a new source of labor. But who could fulfill all these jobs?

The Federal Government’s Office of War Information and the War Manpower Commission soon spearheaded a massive propaganda campaign. Later nicknamed - Operation June Cleaver, to recruit to new workforce - Women!

The government enlisted newspaper and magazine publishers, as well as radio stations and movie makers. They sent out guidelines and memorandum’s on tactics to use to convince women to roll up their sleeves and help with the war effort.

The first and second waves of female workers were relatively easy to attract.

Many women were already working in low-paying, traditional female jobs, including waitresses, beauticians, and domestics. The offer of higher wages worked well to attract these workers to enter factories and other jobs formerly filled by men.

Another group that was relatively easy to entice with these new jobs were the high school and college students. Prior to WWII many female high school students would have gone onto college or into traditional female roles after graduation.

They would work in these low-paying jobs until they married, at which time it was then the social expectation that these young women would then quit to stay home and care for their husbands and start families. The government campaign convinced the female students that it was their patriotic duty to help end the war and bring the boys home. Many of these women were also now financially able to help their family’s as the country was coming out of the Great Depression or even save money to put towards a new home when they eventually married and started a family after the war was over.

Private companies began running ads that now promoted their new female workforce as a way to attract more woman, like this Pennsylvania Railroad ad that referred to their new female workers as Molly Pitchers, a reference to the female Revolutionary War heroin who joined the fighting after her brothers-in-arms fell and continued the fight for freedom.

Pennsylvania Railroad advertisement referring to its female workers as “Molly Pitchers.”

Many women initially didn’t feel that their housekeeping skills were translate to a previous male-dominated role. To ease these fears and help women find their place in the workforce the Women’s Day magazine published December 1943. The two-page test included 80 questions about the woman’s abilities: Can you hammer a nail? Complete a crossword puzzle? Operate a food mixer? Follow a dress pattern?..... Once completed the women were directed to compare their answers to find the type of war job they were best suited for and reminded them that any job the releases a man to fight is a war job!

Women’s Day magazine’s December 1943 “Where Do You Fit In?” test.

It was the third wave of workers that was the biggest challenge for the government’s propaganda campaign - married women and their husbands!

Many married men still worked in essential jobs on the homefront and at U.S. military bases in the states. In a 1943 survey only 30% of husbands supported the idea of their wives working. Government posters like this one pressured men to approved of their women working outside the home.

Government poster encouraging men to approve of their wives working outside the home.

As part of the propaganda campaign The Nation magazine also published an article in their July 1943 issue titled America’s Pampered Husbands. The article chided married men which teased “If a women can learn to operate a drill gun, a man should be able to learn how to operate a washing machine.”

Private companies worked to convince married women with children that it was also their duty to go to work.

My favorite is this ad from Adel.

Adel advertisement promoting women’s work in wartime airplane-parts manufacturing.

Adel manufactured airplane parts during WWII. The ad reads:

Mother, is your job at Adel important? Yes dear, any job that in the least way assists our fighting men is important. Mother is working harder than she ever has before, putting more and more salary into war bonds because she knows how much there is at stake.

Whether due to the offer of higher wages, patriotism, or changing attitudes of society towards working married women, by the end of the war approximately nineteen million women were working outside the home. Six million women worked in war production factories while millions more worked in painting/textile jobs, scientific jobs, clerical jobs, civil service and government jobs, service/retail jobs, inspection/supervision jobs, and on American farms.

Even today this propaganda campaign for women workers is considered the most successful advertising campaign in U.S. history.