Don't forget the Rosie the Riveters?

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Female factory workers in 1942, Long Beach, California.

 

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“Rosie the Riveter”

 

While women worked in a variety of positions previously closed to them, the aviation industry saw the greatest increase in female workers. More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943, representing 65 percent of the industry’s total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-war years). The munitions industry also heavily recruited women workers, as represented by the U.S. government’s “Rosie the Riveter” propaganda campaign. Based in small part on a real-life munitions worker, but primarily a fictitious character, the strong, bandanna-clad Rosie became one of the most successful recruitment tools in American history, and the most iconic image of working women during World War II.

 

In movies, newspapers, posters, photographs, articles and even a Norman Rockwell-painted Saturday Evening Post cover, the Rosie the Riveter campaign stressed the patriotic need for women to enter the work force—and they did, in huge numbers. Though women were crucial to the war effort, their pay continued to lag far behind their male counterparts: Female workers rarely earned more than 50 percent of male wages.

 

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-women-in-world-war-ii

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Here, a woman rivets an airplane wing at a munitions factory.

 

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Worker inspecting bullets

 

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Factory worker

 

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Here, a woman rivets an airplane wing at a munitions factory.

 

[RustyCanteen]

Great photos!

 

RC

[AZPhil]

Fantastic thread!!! Thanks for all the pic's!

Semper Fi

Phil

[gwb123]

I've posted these before, courtesy of the Ordnance Museum Facebook page:

 

Rosie the Ordnance specialist... these women are testing mortar rounds...

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Members of a riveting team at an aircraft factory use rivet guns and bucking bars to work on a basis trainer plane wing center section.

 

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Workers riveting the center wing section for a B-24E Liberator bomber in the horizontal position at the Ford Motor Company plant, Willow Run, Mich., 1943.

 

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[vette]

Thanks for all of the support for these ladies. Many are gone but there are still many around. They do not brag about it but they are in our families. If you have a grand mother in her 80's or 90's, ask her what she did during the war. My neighbor's grand mother Rosalia E. "Babe" Suchek helped make the Corsairs here in Akron Ohio. She passed at 91 in 2009

[Garandomatic]

If you look up the B-29 "Doc," one of the restoration volunteers actually helped to make the very same plane... when it was new...!

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The next set of pictures are from the Life Magazine website. Captions listed with pictures are the original pictures from Life Magazine in WWII.

 

The pictures are titled: Women of Steel: LIFE With Female Factory Workers in World War II

 

http://life.time.com/history/women-of-steel-life-with-female-factory-workers-in-world-war-ii/#1

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Women laborers clear tracks of spilled materials, Gary, Ind. 1943.

 

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Women wearing gas masks clean a blast furnace top at a Gary, Ind. steel mill, 1943.

 

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Women employees at Tubular Alloy Steel Corp. in Gary, Ind. predominate at pep meeting, 1943.

 

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Bernice Daunora, 31, a member of a steel mill's "top gang" who must wear a "one-hour, lightweight breathing apparatus" as protection against gas escaping from blast furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943.

 

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Theresa Arana, 21, takes down temperature recordings at draw furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943.

 

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Caption from LIFE. "Stamping machine in rail mill at Gary is operated by Mrs. Florence Romanowski (right). She mechanically brands identifications into red-hot rails. Her husband is in Army."

 

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Caption from LIFE. "Katherine Mrzljak, 34, is one of top gang. She is Croatian, has two children. Husband also works in mill."

 

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Women welders, Gary, Ind., 1943.

 

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Scarfing is the operation which removes surface defects from slabs to condition them for rolling. Girl (center) marks out defects with chalk for man who is doing the scarfing (right).

 

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Audra Mae Hulse, 20, is flame cutter at the American Bridge Co. in Gary. She has five relatives in plant.