0:03

Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told

0:05

You from how stupp works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline,

0:14

I'm Kristen, and we

0:16

are publishing this episode three

0:19

days after the seventieth anniversary

0:21

of D Day, which is

0:24

basically the beginning of the in for World War

0:26

Two. And so to bring the focus

0:29

the giant focus of World War Two

0:31

into our podcast, we wanted to take

0:34

a look at women during World

0:36

War two, specifically working

0:38

women during World War Two, because oftentimes

0:40

in the podcast we will reference how this

0:43

was a huge period

0:45

for women. Women were entering the workforce

0:47

like never before. They were leaving the homes, both

0:49

single and married women, and going to work

0:52

in factories and munitions

0:54

operations, and as we'll look

0:56

into a couple of other really interesting positions.

0:59

And so then the question is was

1:01

this period such a watershed

1:04

for women's employment outside

1:06

of the home, Because we

1:08

do cite it so often, it's almost a

1:10

knee jerk reflex to say, well, world

1:13

War two, women leave the home, hooray, and

1:15

then we all live happily ever after.

1:18

But there have now been more

1:20

recent revisionist histories

1:24

taking a closer look at the

1:26

permanence of these labor shifts

1:28

and have found that it might

1:30

not have been as much of a watershed as

1:33

we thought. So let's

1:35

give a quick rundown though of

1:38

World War two the timeline to

1:40

give you a reference for when all of this is

1:42

happening. Yeah, don't worry, We're not gonna walk

1:45

you through the entire war, so don't

1:47

don't turn off the podcast. We're just going

1:49

to sprint through the war. We're going to sprint through

1:52

the war. So um. For

1:54

the Chinese, the war World War two

1:56

began in ninety one when Japan invaded

1:59

northeast Stern, China. For Europeans,

2:02

the war began in nineteen thirty nine

2:04

when Germany invaded Poland. And for Americans,

2:07

as we well know, World War two began

2:09

on December seventh, nineteen forty one, when

2:11

the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

2:14

And we time this podcast four d Day,

2:16

which commemorates the Battle of Normandy, which

2:19

started on June six in nineteen

2:21

forty four and lasted through August. And

2:23

it's considered the beginning of

2:25

the end of the war because after

2:28

the Battle of Normandy, the Nazi

2:31

Germany strongholds were starting

2:33

to fall like dominoes across

2:35

Europe, and so by May nineteen

2:38

forty five, the war in Europe ended,

2:40

and in the Pacific, the war ended

2:43

in August nineteen forty five with

2:45

the nuclear bombing of Nagasagi

2:48

in Hiroshima, Right. And so by

2:51

nineteen forty five, when you're looking at the US

2:53

specifically, there were twelve point two

2:55

million US military personnel,

2:57

many of whom were volunteers and some of whom were

3:00

women. And the US

3:02

itself just specifically, the US experienced

3:05

more than four hundred and seven thousand military

3:07

casualties during the war. And

3:09

so with all of these millions of people

3:12

involved in the military, so many people

3:14

overseas, so many casualties, we

3:17

wanted to look at the home front. What

3:19

were the women folk doing while

3:22

all of the men folk were out fighting.

3:24

Yeah, and not to discount all of the incredible

3:27

roles that women were filling in the military

3:29

abroad and you know, doing

3:31

their part to fight for

3:35

Allied freedom. But we wanted

3:37

to take this opportunity to talk about the home front too,

3:39

because I don't think it gets quite as much

3:41

attention. So what's going

3:44

on at this time while you know, soldiers

3:46

are fighting in Europe and elsewhere,

3:49

is that there's rationing happening

3:52

to conserve limited resources, especially

3:54

food, rubber, and steel. You

3:56

also have the

3:59

militarism and pro America

4:01

propaganda seeping into all

4:04

corners of entertainment and pop

4:06

culture. You know, you have war themed

4:08

movies, radio shows, songs,

4:11

comic books. If you look at Classic Superman

4:14

and Wonder Woman, there's a lot

4:16

of you know, kind of war themes

4:19

of going and fighting the Nazis. Yeah,

4:21

even even Disney we talked about

4:23

in our Disney episode. Even Disney did a

4:25

Donald Duck send up of Hitler. So

4:28

even even Donald Duck was involved in World

4:30

War Two. And you know, when you look

4:32

at families as a whole, they definitely were

4:34

a part of the war effort on the home front

4:37

for sure. Um through various

4:39

propaganda campaigns, families were encouraged

4:41

to recycle materials, even

4:44

down to waist fats. So after

4:46

you fry up that bacon, don't forget to save

4:48

the fat and it's and

4:51

my mother definitely still does that. She

4:53

puts the bacon fat and a tin can

4:55

and puts it in the fridge so she can use it to cook green

4:57

bean, not to make explosives, not

4:59

to make exploits. In World War

5:01

two, Um, you were also asked

5:04

to to recycle scrap metal create

5:07

victory gardens by war bonds

5:09

ration in list of course that's a

5:11

huge one. And stop

5:13

spreading those war rumors because remember all

5:15

those posters that said things like loose lips

5:17

sink ships, And they had all

5:19

these sexist posters to about like men

5:21

sitting around smoking cigars discussing war

5:24

strategy, and like a woman listening

5:26

from the background, like, hey, don't talk about

5:28

the war in front of the lady. That he's such

5:30

a war gossip, such a war gossip.

5:33

But I mean speaking of victory gardens.

5:35

Um, this was a huge thing. This

5:38

was a huge part of that whole food

5:40

ration ng aspect. And in nineteen

5:42

forty four alone, twenty

5:44

one million families had planted seven

5:47

million acres of victory gardens

5:49

that yielded eight million

5:52

tons of vegetables. Can you imagine?

5:54

Uh No, I can't imagine, because

5:57

now we are so I feel like our

5:59

even even in suburbia

6:01

back then, you know, you have all these victory gardens

6:04

popping up, and I feel like it's so rare

6:06

these days that we see that kind of suburban and

6:08

more urban gardening. Um although there

6:10

have been revivals of it in pockets

6:12

around the country here and there. But I

6:15

do remember learning about victory gardens

6:17

for the first time Caroline while

6:19

reading the American Girl series

6:21

about Molly, because she

6:24

was she was my favorite American girl doll, even

6:26

though I owned Samantha. But I liked

6:28

Molly the most because she

6:31

grew up during World War Two

6:33

and for some reason, as a child, I was very

6:35

fascinated with that time period interesting

6:38

and I loved the idea of the

6:40

rationing and growing

6:42

a victory garden just like Molly.

6:45

All these things. Anyway, apparently

6:47

I'm a woman after my time.

6:52

Um. Well, getting getting into

6:54

what really the focus of our episode today

6:57

will be about is we also have

6:59

to talk about the millions

7:01

of new jobs that were created to support

7:03

the military's efforts here in the US

7:06

on US soil. As a result of all

7:08

these jobs, there was a large scale migration

7:10

to city centers, industrial

7:12

centers, and all of this increased

7:14

industrial activity led to more

7:17

opportunities for good paying war work

7:19

for African Americans and for women. And

7:22

if you want to look at a great example of

7:24

someone who fits into both of those categories.

7:26

Mary mclaude Bethune, who was the president

7:29

of the National Association of Colored Women

7:31

and founder of the National Council on Negro

7:33

Women, helped to publicize

7:35

the availability of new job opportunities

7:38

through Black women's clubs and publications,

7:40

and she also promoted greater opportunities for

7:42

women of color as a consultant

7:44

to US government agencies on labor

7:47

matters and female officer candidates.

7:49

And even outside of paid employment, women

7:52

were also rushing to volunteer

7:54

their services. So you have women's

7:57

auxiliary organizations forming to

7:59

volteer for the military

8:01

and civilian civil defense organizations.

8:04

You also have a lot of women training to drive ambulances,

8:07

fight fires, provide emergency medical

8:09

treatment, become drivers for the Red Cross,

8:12

and motorcycle couriers. I mean it

8:14

sounds like, really this is also an

8:16

opportunity when a lot of cool kinds of

8:19

jobs, whether paid or unpaid, are

8:21

popping up for women. Because this came up to

8:24

in our episode on firefighting

8:26

women a while back, when

8:28

you see the spike in women's

8:31

participation in local firefighting

8:33

departments during World War

8:35

Two because the men are off fighting

8:38

Nazis, so the women have to stay

8:40

home to fight the fires, right, somebody has

8:42

to put out the fires, and I mean

8:45

it's it's a shame that it took

8:47

a war for women to be able

8:50

to do that in any sort of official capacity.

8:52

But anyway, let's look at the numbers,

8:54

shall we. So before the war in the United

8:57

States, eleven point five million

8:59

women were working, so already there was definitely

9:01

a strong female presence in the U. S. Workforce.

9:04

But during the war we always

9:07

hear about this massive influx

9:09

of women getting jobs.

9:12

So six million at least

9:15

um. Now, during the war, as we often

9:17

hear about this massive influx of women

9:20

into jobs. During World

9:22

War Two, we have over

9:24

six million new women entering

9:27

the workforce, around half of whom are

9:29

working in the war industries. And

9:32

so between nineteen forty and nineteen

9:34

forty five, the female percentage of the U. S workforce

9:37

increased from twenty seven percent

9:39

to nearly thirty seven percent. And

9:42

from the end of nineteen forty three

9:44

through early nineteen four, during

9:47

the peak of war production, around

9:49

fifty of US women

9:51

were employed. So this is where why you

9:54

hear all the time about how this was unprecedented

9:57

for you know, women's participation

10:00

the workforce right, And you

10:02

know, there there is the whole pay

10:04

aspect that women basically

10:07

provided cheap labor while the men were gone.

10:09

I mean, they rarely made more than of

10:11

what the men had earned. But think

10:14

about it, these jobs were paying higher salaries

10:16

than the jobs that were traditionally categorized

10:19

as women's work, the work that was acceptable

10:22

for women to do outside of the home, things like

10:24

being a teacher, being in domestic service,

10:26

clerical work, nursing, stuff like that. UM

10:29

and I thought it was interesting. There was one study

10:31

we looked at that that highlighted

10:34

women's participation in the

10:36

auto manufacturing and electrical

10:38

manufacturing industries. Specifically,

10:40

they pulled out just this information

10:43

UM and pointed out that in women

10:47

made up twenty two point four percent

10:49

of auto manufacturing industry workers.

10:52

And they also made up of

10:54

the United Auto Workers Union. And

10:57

that's a whole other aspect to that's

10:59

so cred goal because during World War

11:01

Two the UAW had two

11:04

hundred and fifty thousand female

11:06

members. That's huge. It even established

11:08

a Women's bureau in its War Policy

11:10

Division that in nineteen forty four

11:13

addressed pay inequalities between

11:15

male and female workers. And the auto

11:18

sector is a standout

11:20

example because prior to the

11:22

war, there were very few women

11:25

working in that type of manufacturing

11:27

compared to electrical engineering, which

11:29

actually employed a lot of women before

11:31

the war. But if you look at nineteen

11:34

ten in the auto industry,

11:36

only three percent of it was comprised

11:39

by female workers. Yeah,

11:41

and so going over to the electrical manufacturing

11:43

industry, um, comparing that to auto in

11:47

women made up forty seven point five

11:49

per cent of those workers, and

11:51

they made up of the United

11:54

Electrical Workers unions, so they definitely

11:56

had a voice. They might have been in sort

11:59

of an unfortunate the temporary

12:01

work situation. I don't think they

12:03

quite knew at the time how temporary would end up

12:06

being, but they had a voice while

12:08

they were there. And if you just look at manufacturing

12:11

across all of those different

12:13

industries, women's employment grew

12:16

one during World

12:18

War Two. So looking

12:21

at some other specific types of jobs

12:23

that women were doing, I found some articles

12:26

on women being computers. Yes,

12:28

women as computers, not women programming

12:31

computers, but actually being human computers.

12:33

Right. And what's so interesting about this line of

12:36

work is that it was kind of secret. It

12:38

was kind of a top secret wartime work

12:40

mission in nineteen, hundreds

12:43

of women were recruited to work as computer

12:45

tours, and they were targeted

12:47

for their math skills. Usually they had either studied

12:50

or majored in math in college. And basically

12:52

what they did as computers they would calculate

12:54

the weapons trajectories for soldiers

12:56

overseas, often working double or triple

12:59

shifts um. They would use mechanical

13:01

dusk calculators to solve these long lists

13:04

of equations and then send those results

13:06

in table form to the gunnery

13:08

officers. And they also were

13:11

able to take into account variable conditions like

13:13

temperature and air density, and even

13:15

calculate weather an enemy

13:17

with standing or lying in a trench. Yeah,

13:20

and I mean that kind of explains why a lot

13:22

of this was top secret work. And you

13:24

have people though, like Lila Todd,

13:27

who was an example of a specialist.

13:29

She was a specialized human computer who

13:31

operated a differential analyzer

13:34

that calculated shell or

13:36

bombs flight paths as

13:38

they flew through the air. Now, of course, today

13:41

all of this is completely mechanized

13:43

and you know, can be calculated in a split

13:45

second. But in these early

13:47

days you have a host

13:49

of women like Lila Todd and others

13:52

who are are doing these important

13:54

calculations for the military. Yeah,

13:56

and I did read that. You

13:58

know, there were machines that could do various

14:01

types of calculations are set up the equations,

14:04

but the women, as the computers, were really

14:06

expected to check the machines accuracy.

14:08

The machines were not to be trusted, and

14:10

we would be remiss so to not mention that. Out

14:13

of this military

14:16

World War two fueled focus

14:18

on computing, you have the development of

14:20

the ENIAC, which was one of the first

14:23

electronic digital computers, and

14:25

it was a group of six women

14:28

quote unquote human computers who had been

14:30

trained during World War Two, Kame

14:32

McNulty, Francis Biolas, Betty

14:34

Jean Jennings, Elizabeth Snyder, Ruth Lichtman,

14:37

and Maryland Westcoff who were chosen

14:40

to program it. So early

14:42

stem history in there for you folks.

14:44

That's awesome. Um

14:47

In, I just this next

14:49

one. I just have like this great montage, this imaginary

14:51

montage in my head of of these women

14:53

going down the street. But in New Orleans

14:56

they were affected by the war because

14:58

all their conductors left. Women had

15:00

to work as streetcar conductorates.

15:03

And I just imagined them with like a jaunty hat

15:05

like pulling the whistle going down the street.

15:08

Now, I mentioned manufacturing a few minutes

15:10

ago. Not surprisingly, if

15:12

you look at the major war industries like

15:14

metalworking, chemical, rubber that

15:17

saw a major jump in

15:19

women's employment of four hundred sixty

15:21

percent during the war, and the munitions

15:23

industry in particular heavily

15:25

recruited women's workers. This is where you get

15:28

all those riveters, all those Rosie

15:30

the riveters lining up. Yeah,

15:33

and the industry that saw the greatest

15:35

increase in female workers was the aviation

15:37

industry, which makes sense. More than

15:40

three thousand women worked

15:42

in the US aircraft industry in which

15:44

represented of

15:47

the industry's total workforce, compared

15:49

to just one percent in the pre war years.

15:52

So we've established that, yes, there was

15:54

this influx of women into

15:57

these various industries, some directly

15:59

related to the war, some not so much.

16:02

But the government didn't

16:04

just snap its fingers and have all these

16:06

women magically appear on the

16:08

job. Rather, they had

16:10

to develop a propaganda

16:13

program to sell the idea of women

16:15

in particularly married

16:18

women working outside

16:20

of the home. And we're going to get into

16:23

that propaganda campaign, and yes, we

16:25

are going to talk some about Rosie the Riveter

16:27

when we come right back from a quick break.

16:37

So all right before the break, we

16:40

were discussing the industries

16:42

that women were entering, all of the different jobs that

16:44

they were taking over as the men were

16:46

going overseas to fight in World War two,

16:49

and how it wasn't necessarily

16:52

an overnight sensation that all of

16:54

these women entered these various

16:56

very masculine, traditionally masculine

16:59

jobs. It was as an effort, and

17:02

during this time the government turned to the War

17:04

Advertising Council, which

17:06

created the Women in War Jobs campaign

17:09

to stress the need for women to do

17:11

their patriotic duty, walk

17:14

outside of their homes and get

17:16

a gerb. Jobs that were previously

17:18

seen as super masculine were now compared

17:20

to housework to let women

17:22

know, hey, you can rivet

17:25

yeah, And we've we've read a lot about

17:27

this in the book Gender at Work, The Dynamics

17:30

of Job Segregation by Sex during

17:32

World War Two, which yes, it is a

17:34

bit of a page turner and that

17:36

might not sound like it um And it talks

17:38

though about how World War two

17:41

really saw the extension of occupational

17:43

sex segregation, where if you were to walk into

17:46

an electrical engineering plant, you

17:49

would have the women doing certain

17:51

types of tasks that were highly

17:53

repetitive, reliant on a lot

17:55

of manual dexterity, a lot

17:57

of focus and attention, whereas men

18:00

would have done jobs that required

18:02

perhaps more physical stamina.

18:05

And they then go into talking about

18:08

how war work was sold

18:10

to women and the author's right wartime

18:12

propaganda imagery of a woman's

18:15

place on the nation's production lines consistently

18:17

portrayed women's war work as

18:19

a temporary extension of domesticity,

18:22

and jobs that have been previously viewed

18:24

as the quintessentially masculine were

18:26

suddenly endowed with femininity

18:28

and glamour for the duration.

18:31

And as a result of this propaganda

18:33

campaign, you also see

18:36

articles in popular media

18:39

publicizing this need and

18:41

probably to like adding to that glamour

18:44

effect of saying, oh, hey,

18:46

no women, we need you, come on, come to work.

18:48

So, in for instance,

18:50

you have a Fortune magazine article headlined

18:53

the margin now is woman power, and

18:56

which kind of sounds like an article

18:58

you'd still see rich in magazine.

19:01

And in the same year, Newsweek reported

19:03

that the government needed three point

19:05

two million new workers and quote

19:08

most of these will have to be women.

19:10

So they were really, you know, pushing, pushing

19:13

this message. Yeah, well you

19:15

had to fill the slots. I mean yeah,

19:18

I mean it's some cheap lady labor. We needed

19:20

to build planes and guns and all

19:23

sorts of things. And who better to build

19:25

you a plane than a

19:27

lovely lady named Rosie.

19:30

That's right. So the Rosie the Riveter propaganda

19:33

campaign was I mean,

19:35

she was a character. She was. She was just a character.

19:38

But I love reading the Rosie

19:40

mythology because some

19:42

some real Rosie's come up that

19:44

people say that she's based on. Among

19:48

some other women, we have rose

19:50

will Monroe, who moved to Michigan

19:52

during the war and worked as a riveter building

19:55

B twenty nine and B twenty four

19:57

bombers, and she Rosie the

20:00

character appeared in various incarnations

20:02

throughout the war. Um Her

20:04

origins lie around sometime

20:06

around ninety two, when a Westinghouse

20:09

artist named J. Howard Miller created that

20:11

we Can Do It campaign, probably

20:14

as part of his company's war work. And

20:16

she's the prototype for the Rosy we think of and the

20:18

we can Do It poster rolling up her sleeve.

20:21

But there's also other Rosie characters

20:24

during this time. There's a song titled

20:26

Rosie the Riveter that was written by John Jacob

20:28

Lobe and Red Evans, that was released

20:30

in early nineteen forty three, and

20:32

the lyrics described the role

20:35

that she filled. They said, she's part

20:37

of the assembly line, she's making history,

20:39

she's working for victory. She's Rosie

20:41

the Riveter. And that is definitely a song I

20:43

would love to hear. But it was supposedly

20:46

inspired by Rosalind P. Walter,

20:48

who worked also as a riveter on the night

20:50

shift on a course there building the f

20:52

for You Marine gold winged fighter

20:55

airplane. She later became a philanthropist

20:57

Lottie Dab, but she inspired that. Yeah,

21:00

And that was not the only Rosie the Riveter

21:03

song. There was also one by

21:05

the Four Vagabonds, and

21:07

I enjoyed its lyrics that went,

21:10

while other girls attend a favorite cocktail

21:12

bar sipping dry Martini's, munching

21:15

caviare nice rhyme or vagabonds,

21:17

there's a girl who's really putting them

21:19

to shame. Rosie is her name,

21:22

all day long with a rain of sean and she's part

21:24

of the assembly line. And come

21:26

to find out in this Rosie

21:29

the Riveter lore, she also

21:31

had a boyfriend named Charlie who was

21:33

a soldier off fighting.

21:36

So she was working, doing her riveting,

21:39

hoping that Charlie could come home and

21:41

then she could retire her red bandana.

21:44

After they get married and she becomes

21:46

Rosie the housewife. How

21:49

how surprised Charlie would

21:51

be when Rosie wanted to hang onto that

21:53

red bandanna, And how surprised Charlie would

21:55

be when his wife became a

21:58

feminist icon. That's right. Well,

22:00

if we look to art and pop culture,

22:03

we we can't forget to mention

22:05

Norman Rockwell um on Maree.

22:09

His depiction of Rosie appeared on the cover of the Saturday

22:11

Evening Post, and while nineteen

22:13

year old Mary Doyle served as the

22:15

model for his Rosie, he

22:17

made some drastic changes to her

22:19

appearance, making her more muscular. And

22:22

when I say that he made drastic

22:24

changes, I mean if

22:26

you compare his Rosie on

22:29

the cover of the magazine to Michaelangelo's

22:31

depiction of Isaiah from the Sistine

22:33

Chapel, Like, there's

22:36

your Rosie, that that big

22:38

prophet Isaiah on the freaking ceiling

22:41

of that. That's that's Rosie, just in overalls

22:43

and a woman. Hey, he'll take it. Yeah,

22:46

And and and when he's like bending

22:48

his arm. I don't know what he's doing on the Sistine show.

22:50

I don't know what he's doing on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. But

22:52

but Rosie has a sandwich in that hand, something

22:55

that I greatly appreciate. Now

22:57

for the US government selling this

23:00

idea of going to work was

23:02

not too tough when

23:05

you're talking to a group of Rosie the riveters,

23:07

and by that I mean younger women

23:09

who were probably unmarried, might have had their you

23:11

know, Charlie boyfriends off fighting, they didn't

23:13

have kids. It wasn't a

23:16

crazy idea at the time for

23:18

a woman to work before she

23:20

got married, because I mean you have to

23:22

remember too that this was also

23:24

the time when you start having what we're called

23:27

marriage bands. We talked about this in our teaching

23:29

episode a little while ago about

23:32

how essentially as soon as

23:34

you got married, or if you were

23:36

married, you were barred from

23:39

being hired by a lot of different

23:42

places, and so you have

23:44

that eroding and

23:46

the US government was having to make this much

23:49

tougher sell in this

23:51

era of marriage bands to

23:54

get married women on the

23:56

job as well. And we

23:58

read about this in the book Our Mother's War American

24:01

women at home and at the front

24:03

during World War two, and they signed a

24:05

ninety six poll which found that eighty two

24:07

percent of Americans believed that wives

24:09

should not work if their husbands

24:11

have jobs. And you have to remember

24:14

that only one in ten new

24:16

women workers during World

24:18

War two had soldier husbands,

24:20

because earlier in the war there were automatic

24:23

wife exemptions basically like, oh, I got a

24:25

wife, can't go to war because I gotta stay home

24:27

and take care of her or the and and then

24:29

that gave way to like, okay, well, if you have a wife,

24:31

that's son enough. But if you have kids and a wife,

24:34

then you then you're not going to go. And

24:36

gradually those fell away,

24:38

but it was still pretty common for

24:41

husbands with wives and children to not

24:44

be called to action.

24:47

But because there

24:50

was a lot of resistance for those

24:52

women who had you know, civilian husbands

24:54

who were still had jobs and we're working,

24:57

there's a lot of resistance to allowing those wives

24:59

to war. You have articles

25:02

like this one published in the Nation in

25:05

headlined America's Pampered

25:07

Husband's basically calling out

25:10

these civilian guys who weren't

25:12

keen on their wives working, which again

25:14

that was a lot of them basically saying like,

25:17

hey, guys, you can you can make your own

25:19

sandwiches. Rosie the riverter makes her own sandwiches,

25:22

you can too. It's not a big deal. So that

25:25

was interesting to me to to read

25:27

about how this was one one

25:29

facet of this whole women's work

25:31

issue that was probably the most

25:33

challenging for then the US

25:36

war propaganda machine. Well, yeah,

25:38

because you don't think about

25:41

women's husbands still being hometelling

25:43

them they can't go to work. We do.

25:45

We just think of World War two is this time

25:48

when it's like the parents are gone, you know,

25:50

the cats away, the mice will play. It's like the

25:52

doors are just open and women are like stepping

25:54

outside into the sunlight, you

25:56

know, blocking the sun from their eyes, going

25:58

like, I can get a job.

26:01

Well. I wonder though, how many of those women

26:03

really wanted to get jobs too. It was probably

26:05

a tough sell to them as well. But

26:07

there was also this great letter published

26:10

in that book, Our Mother's War

26:12

from this woman who was married. I don't

26:14

think she had any kids, but her husband

26:17

was in the military and she had gotten uh,

26:19

some kind of manufacturing job in one of

26:21

the war industries, and she was so

26:24

excited telling him about how she opened

26:26

her own checking account, and she was like,

26:28

Oh, it's the best feeling in the world to be able

26:30

to write a check and not have to ask anyone for

26:33

permission. Oh, what a

26:35

what a wonderful thing, and what a nice little dig.

26:38

Yeah, but she was like, but

26:40

she was genuinely overjoyed

26:42

by it. Absolutely. But you

26:44

know, and that sounds great women women

26:46

are working in their opening their checking accounts, But

26:50

we didn't end up in some amazing

26:52

equal opportunity, equal working rights

26:55

utopia. And as soon as

26:57

the war was over. So what happened after the

26:59

war was over, Well, if you think about

27:01

it, you know, we cited earlier in the podcast

27:03

that by there were twelve

27:05

point two million US military

27:08

personnel involved in the war. Let's assume

27:10

a majority of those are men. So

27:12

you have all these guys coming

27:15

back and they

27:18

need their jobs back, right. Yeah.

27:21

Basically, basically after the war, women

27:23

went home or they were

27:25

expected to go back into traditionally female

27:27

occupations. And you know, most

27:30

industry analysts and government planners expected

27:32

them to. And not only did they expect

27:34

women to go back to the home or back to their

27:36

clerical work, but they expected women

27:39

to want to do that, So how

27:42

surprised they must have been when

27:45

the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor

27:47

got their survey results back after

27:49

asking women workers about their future

27:52

plans at the end of the war, when

27:54

they pulled all of these women,

27:57

they found that many wanted to stay,

27:59

but factories were converting to peacetime

28:01

production and refused to rehire a

28:03

lot of these women. Of

28:06

the woman women they talked to said that they

28:08

expected to be a part of the post

28:10

war labor force, and eight six percent

28:12

of those looked forward to staying in

28:14

their very same industry.

28:17

And when you look at the women who were

28:19

employed both before Pearl Harbor

28:21

was attacked and during the war, of

28:24

those women, so the majority of those women said

28:26

that they wanted to stay employed. These

28:29

were women who, not

28:31

to sound melodramatic, but they'd gotten a taste

28:33

of freedom. They had opened their own checking accounts.

28:35

They had been independent either while their husbands

28:38

worked at their normal jobs or while their husbands

28:40

and boyfriends were overseas fighting the war.

28:42

And how disappointing that

28:45

so many of them were forced out

28:47

of their manufacturing jobs. Well,

28:49

and one thing that jumped out too in that

28:51

post war report from the Women's

28:53

Bureau of the Department of Labor, it was

28:56

as though they were opening their

28:58

eyes for the first time to this

29:00

idea of female breadwinners,

29:03

because they found that out of every

29:05

one hundred married women who were living in family

29:07

groups of two or more people, eleven

29:09

said they were the only wage earner supporting

29:12

the family group. And so they go on to say that quote

29:14

the state of marriage therefore does not in itself

29:17

always mean there is a male provider

29:19

for the family. How interesting.

29:23

So this is the period that a lot of people are

29:25

very interested in, including us, looking

29:28

at were was this the watershed

29:30

moment that we think it was? Was this was

29:32

World War two the period that ushered

29:34

in more and more women working.

29:37

Yes, it was, but it's not exactly

29:40

super cut and dry, because

29:42

so many women were forced out of their

29:44

manufacturing jobs. But the service

29:46

sector was expanding. So even

29:49

though women were having to leave certain jobs,

29:51

some of them went home, but some of them also

29:54

transitioned over to the service sector.

29:56

Yeah. Essentially, blue collar women

29:59

transitioned to be um pink collar women

30:01

as we think of it more today, with pink

30:03

collar jobs being more oriented

30:06

towards customer service waitresses,

30:08

clerical work secretaries, etcetera.

30:11

And on top of this two, you have to remember the

30:13

cultural climate of the post

30:15

war years where you're having this

30:18

baby boom happen. You're having this resurgence

30:21

of you know, traditional domesticity.

30:23

I'll leave it to beaver with the wife at

30:25

home and you know, the husband

30:28

going out and for the first time

30:30

too. I mean also remember

30:32

for the war, we had the depression, and

30:35

so this was also a new period

30:37

where due to the

30:39

economic boom time happening,

30:42

it was possible for

30:45

a lot more families than it was prior to the war

30:47

to have a soul breadwinner. And that soul

30:49

breadwinner would have in this time,

30:52

you know, had to have been a guy. I mean, it would

30:54

have been a man going out to to earn

30:56

the wage for his June Cleaver, right,

30:58

And a lot of authors that we've looked at we're talking about

31:01

the defeminization of these manufacturing

31:03

jobs as men came back. And remember

31:05

at the top of the podcast, we were looking at the auto

31:07

manufacturing and electrical manufacturing

31:09

industries in particular because they had

31:12

a really high percentage of women in ninety

31:14

five. That drop though, if

31:17

you look at auto manufacturing in particular. Granted

31:20

it had a very low pre war

31:22

women percentage, but the

31:25

percent of women involved in the auto

31:27

manufacturing industry dropped from twenty

31:29

two point four percent in nineteen forty five to

31:31

just nine point five percent in nineteen

31:34

forty six, So that's that's not like that's a huge

31:36

amount of time. In electrical manufacturing,

31:38

it dropped from a high of forty seven point

31:41

five percent in nineteen forty five to thirty

31:43

nine point four percent in nineteen forty six.

31:45

So it leads us back to that original

31:48

question of whether or not World War two

31:50

really did have a direct role in the eventual

31:53

rise in women workers and

31:55

even feminism, because there's that one

31:57

major school of thought that we

31:59

hear all the time and we say all the time

32:02

on the podcast that World War two

32:04

was this watershed moment for women's

32:06

employment, because I mean, we have to acknowledge it. From nine

32:09

to night, the average hourly

32:11

earnings of female manufacturing workers, for

32:13

instance, rose relative

32:16

to that for male workers. Even though we're

32:18

still underpaid. We were by

32:21

the end of it less underpaid than we were

32:23

before. But some

32:26

say, some like Claudia Golden, who

32:28

has looked a lot into this issue.

32:31

She says, not so

32:33

much, though you can't make that blanket statement

32:35

at least. Yeah. Golden's

32:38

been writing about this very specific topic

32:40

for years, and in a paper

32:43

she and her co author

32:45

were writing about how basically states

32:48

with a higher mobilization of

32:50

men i e. Soldiers heading

32:52

overseas saw more

32:54

women getting into the labor force. Okay,

32:56

that makes sense. If you have a bigger gap in

32:58

employment, you're going to have more women

33:01

fill it um. But she actually

33:03

points out that the impact was strongest

33:05

among those women with higher levels of

33:07

educational attainment. She

33:09

says that among those with at least a high school

33:11

diploma, almost eighty percent were in

33:13

white collar jobs, and for those

33:15

with less than a high school diploma, just twenty

33:18

percent were in white collar positions. About

33:20

seventy were in blue

33:22

collar jobs, and the vast majority of

33:24

these were in manufacturing.

33:27

And so for those women in manufacturing,

33:29

remember they're kind of pushed

33:32

out and transitioned into more

33:34

pink collar work. And so it seems

33:37

like when it comes to Rosie, the riveter

33:39

life might not have been so grand for her

33:42

after Charlie came home, right,

33:44

because, as as Golden points out,

33:46

she says, Look, by nineteen fifty, these

33:49

women's occupations, both blue

33:51

collar, white collar, they weren't that

33:53

much different than they were in nineteen forty

33:56

four, except that those manufacturing

33:58

positions like Rosie the Riveter held decreased

34:02

and the service occupations took their

34:04

place among the lesser educated

34:06

group. So if you have higher

34:09

educational attainment, you're probably gonna be okay

34:11

regardless. But it's those women

34:13

who were among the lesser educated

34:15

groups that are probably going to get shoved into poor

34:18

paying and honestly less exciting jobs.

34:20

They're they're not riveting anymore. Yeah, I mean,

34:23

and and these are probably gonna be similar

34:25

patterns that you will continue to see

34:28

even today when it comes to I

34:30

mean, what kind of educational

34:32

attainment and socio economic background,

34:34

how that precludes you to the kind of

34:36

work that you end

34:39

up in. And I don't think that it would

34:41

take an economist to tell you that that

34:43

kind of pattern between let's

34:45

face it, more of at least educationally speaking,

34:48

haves and have not. It's probably

34:50

probably persists beyond the

34:53

World War two era. But

34:55

we bring this up to maybe

34:57

do a little a little revisionist history

35:00

of our own to add some context to

35:03

Rosie the Riveter, whether or not this really

35:05

was that watershed moment, whether you

35:07

know all all of the different moving

35:09

parts of women

35:12

entering the workforce and mass and the

35:14

numbers that we see today.

35:16

It wasn't just a well, okay, wars

35:19

broken out, here we go. Yeah.

35:22

It took some convincing. And then

35:24

once once they were in those roles, the

35:27

bulk of the women who were filling those roles

35:29

were like, Okay, I'd like to stay. Could

35:31

I stay? This would be great. I'm gonna stay, And people

35:33

are like, no, I can say. And to that

35:36

point though, about World War two's impact

35:38

on feminism, one of the things we read

35:40

was talking about how not so much World

35:43

War two, but really the civil rights movement

35:45

that lit that fire in terms of

35:47

organizing and demonstrating. And so

35:50

maybe that's another podcast for another time,

35:53

but this has been our d Day World

35:55

War two commemorative episode.

35:58

I hope you learned some things about that era that

36:00

you didn't already know. I know I did, And

36:03

I'm really interested in hearing from listeners

36:05

out there who might have a grandmother

36:07

or a great grandmother who who worked

36:09

during this period. Yeah, let us know any

36:12

any cool photos that you have from

36:14

that time too. I love someone I still

36:17

love World War two era

36:19

nostalgia. And you can send those

36:21

emails to us and mom stuff at

36:23

how stuff works dot com, where you can also tweet

36:25

us or messages on Facebook. And

36:27

we've got a couple of messages to share with you right

36:30

now. So

36:34

we have a couple of Facebook messages to share

36:36

with you about our episode, fittingly enough,

36:39

on military spouses, and

36:41

this first one comes from Christopher

36:43

and he writes, I would love

36:46

to give you some feedback from the perspective of a

36:48

male service member with nineteen years

36:50

experience. Being a military

36:52

spouse is probably the toughest job I know

36:54

of. I may go into harm's way in defense

36:56

of this country, but I also do so willingly, knowing

36:58

exactly what I'm getting my self into. Any

37:01

spouse never signed up for this. They

37:03

just happen to fall in love with one of us. When we

37:05

leave. They keep the home front all

37:07

on their own, never knowing when they'll hear from

37:09

us, or if that knock on the door is going to be someone

37:12

telling them that their loved one is injured or worse.

37:15

They need to have that time at home to take care of the

37:17

house, the kids, the bills, etcetera. My brother

37:19

in law recently moved in with his wife and

37:21

I and he was shocked at just how much my

37:23

wife does just being a housewife.

37:26

This creates a lot of stress for them. From

37:28

my own experience, this is the root of why

37:30

so many marriages fail in the military.

37:32

It's that either the service member or the spouse doesn't

37:35

realize this fully until that first

37:37

serious deployment. That's why I recommend

37:39

that a couple should go through a deployment together

37:42

first. This is also the root of other such

37:44

problems, such as the high rate of infidelity within the

37:46

military. It's due to loneliness.

37:49

One thing that I took to heart were the comments about

37:51

the stigma associated with the supposed laziness

37:53

of military spouses and the reasons you pointed

37:55

out about the moves and such affecting

37:57

long term relationships and jobs. My

38:00

brother in law recently moved in with my wife and I

38:02

and he was shocked at just how much my wife

38:05

does being a housewife.

38:07

This creates a lot of stress for them.

38:09

From my own experience, this is the root of why

38:11

so many marriages fail in the military.

38:14

That either the service member or the spouse

38:16

doesn't fully realize this until that first

38:18

serious deployment, and that's why I recommend

38:21

that a couple should go through a deployment

38:23

together first. So thanks

38:25

for that insight, Christopher, and I

38:27

have a letter here from Brooke looking at

38:29

sort of the darker side of

38:32

what can happen among military

38:34

spouses. But Brooke

38:37

writes that she was really excited to hear the episode

38:39

on Military Wives. I

38:41

myself am a former military wife. My ex

38:44

husband was a tanker during the thunder run

38:46

in Iraq and we were stationed at Fort Knox after

38:48

he came back state side. I can vouch

38:50

for most things that were discussed in your podcast,

38:52

including the extramarital fairs. My

38:54

ex husband was physically, verbally and sexually

38:57

abusive, and I allowed him to belittle me

38:59

until I true really had not an ounce of self

39:01

esteem left over. He came back from

39:03

Iraq with an STD which he blamed me for

39:05

giving him, and slept around with anything that looked

39:07

his way. It wasn't until he slept with his first

39:09

sergeant's wife, a friend of mine the less

39:12

that I had proof enough to leave him.

39:14

The Army didn't punish to mote or reprimand him

39:16

at all. Instead, they backed him up, protected

39:18

him, and allowed him to stay and listed as a non commission

39:20

officer. I was disgusted as this was

39:23

not behavior that was deemed becoming of an n

39:25

c O. With more and more stories

39:27

making headlines about these types of situations,

39:29

I can only hope that the armed forces will start to

39:31

see the forest for the trees and deal with these soldiers

39:33

that they should be dealt with instead of

39:35

leaving the military spouses to deal with it on their own.

39:38

The spouse is there to pick up the pieces when they

39:40

come back from combat, but receives no support

39:43

when there's trouble in their own home. Thanks

39:45

for listening and giving us something great to listen

39:47

to, and thank you Brooke for writing in. Yeah,

39:50

and thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom

39:52

stuff at how stuff works dot com is

39:55

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39:57

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39:59

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40:01

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