Women in the Wars
In early America among the colonists, women’s lives tended to center around their family. From the late colonial period through the American Revolution, women's jobs, especially married women, were mostly about assisting their husband’s farm work. They also completed domestic chores such as cooking, weaving and sewing clothes, gardening, taking care of the children and house cleaning. These were considered as traditional feminine jobs.
As the wave of the first Industrial Revolution in Western Europe spread to the United States in the early 1800s, women started to work outside the home. Factory owners hired women as cheap labor forces to save one-third to one-half of what they paid a man doing the same job. In 1850, the salary of a woman working in a shoe factory in Cincinnati was about three dollars per week before the deduction of the cost of supplies. However, the wages were still much higher than working on a farm, which became a strong attraction to women. Between 1830 and 1860, women under 20 became the major labor force in the industry.
During this period, women were still working in “traditionally female” professions. They mostly took jobs in domestic service and textile factories.
Women workers in the ordnance shops of Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company in Nicetown, Pennsylvania during WWI.
In 1914, women’s roles began to change tremendously because of the war. During WWI, as men went off to the war, women took over men’s responsibilities in factories. The labor force of women became a majority in the rapidly expanding war industries. In American wars prior to WWII, women’s power was highly in demand in the occupations which used to be exclusive to men, such as riveters, electricians, drivers, and telegraphers, etc. Nearly 19 million women entered in the workforce and about 350,000 women served in the armed forces during WWII.
Women, some dressed in uniform, changing the tire of a truck during WWII, 1939.
“During the conflict that was placed before them, they not only gained the gratitude of many in their own generation but they proved, for the first time on a global scale, the enormous value of a woman’s contribution, paving the way for future generations of women to do the same.”
― Kathryn J. Atwood
Those women who served in the workforce were facing great challenges in the World War era, such as gender resistance and childcare. In the war times, women had to play dual roles as the workers and mothers. Even though the childcare facilities which can be serving 105,000 children were built in the WWII, the need for childcare for working mothers was still unable to meet.
Most men were worried that the demand of war would make women too masculine. In order to reassure men that women would keep themselves feminine, some factories provided make-up classes to make sure that those female employees look their best. And this was believed as an efficient way to improve morale.
However, after the war ended, men who returned from the military worried that there would be no jobs for them in the industry. In this case, they admonished women to go back home and live along traditional lines - being housewives. Although about 75% of women reported that they wanted to continue working after WWII, they were pulled out from their positions at the end of the war.
Archival footage from the National Archives.
Women’s entry and exit to the workforce were driven by larger forces: In the first industrial revolution, it was a mixture of supporting themselves and helping contribute to their household; when the war came, women stepped into the factory, took over men’s jobs in response to the government call; After the war, women were forced to quit because men no longer need them to participate in the workforce. However, because of the suffrage movement, women started to seek equal places with men in the workforce. By 1950, about 32% of women were working outside their home, and half of them were married. Nowadays, women are active in professions of all walks of life, and 6.6% of them worked full-time in men-dominated occupations in 2017, according to a research by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.