Even famous Rosie the Riveter once said, “We Can Do It!” (Panchyk 57) Women played a huge role in World War II. One of the important roles was working in the military. They served in all three services, Army, Air Force and Navy. When the government was recruiting women into the Army, they made it sound glamorous. When the women joined the Army, they did not get glamorous jobs.
Some women “felt they were needed at home to raise families, crops for food and to fill the jobs that the men had vacated in order to serve their country.”(Suite101) Women’s lives on the home front during World War II were a significant part of the war effort for all participants and had a major impact on the outcome of the war. Once the men went off to war and left their jobs, the women that were single had a great advantage because job opportunities were everywhere. In the other hand married women had a tough time, especially if they had children. Hundreds of women worked in machine shops, welding shops, manufacturing plants, and also worked in war industries to make equipment for the war. New industries, naval, and army bases were being built during the home front.
The women went from running the house to running the factory. Men went from running the factory to running the army and fighting. French Field Marshal Joffre emphasizes, “If the women in the factories stopped work for twenty minutes, the Allies would lose the war.” I believe that the women were the main driving force behind the war and helped the United States win with the Allies. Without them, I believe, the men fighting would not have had much power to continue to fight since the women provided them with necessities to win. The women of the early 20th century helped by filling in the jobs that men used, volunteering as nurses, and giving hope to the soldiers to fight back with.
Field chose five women to interview and talk about their experiences during the war, stressing the working conditions that the high volume of war production built for black and white women. The five women being interviewed, two white women and three black women, all came from diverse backgrounds, Brooklyn, Illinois, Detroit, and Arkansas farms. While the women are being interviewed, the film goes back and forth with the women’s personal experiences and views and the actual philosophy of the war as seen in propaganda
The mission of the NAWSA was to fight for women’s rights and to also gain respect for all women in the United States. Alice Paul along with her friend Lucy Burns began to think of many ideas to help the suffrage movement but the NAWSA thought that their ideas were to extreme and would only cause problems for women in America. So Alice Paul and Lucy Burns started their own organization called the National Women’s Party or NWP. Which held the same concepts that the NAWSA but with a more radical or extreme approach. The NAWSA started criticizing the NWP for their methods and for protesting a president during the war.
During World War I, Madam Walker recruited many black soldiers to the military. She also visited many of their training camps and encouraged her agents to hold local war bond fundraisers. Walker eventually became the leader of the Circle of Negro War Relief (Higginbotham
Women helped cure many troops during the war. Because of the numerous amounts of soldiers being wounded in the trenches everyday, women were brought to the front line to help and cure the injured by joining the humanitarian organization, the American Red Cross. It was surely not an easy task, for the women ran the risk of being hit by a stray bullet, or even shelled during the enemy’s bombardment. Women without any medical knowledge usually served as drivers in ambulances, also
Women in World War II During World War II eight brave and talented woman where chosen by the Library of Congress, because of their The histoecrical events and characteristics of three of the eight women “who came to the front” in World War II, were chosen because of the strength and variety of their collections in the Library of Congress. These women have more than just one quality in common which made them important in world history. These three women are :Therese Bonney, Esther Bubley and Dorothea Lange. During World War II photographers and reporters did not dedicate themselves only to military and political events. Some photographers like Therese Bonney, Esther Bubley and Dorothea Lange documented the changes of the homefront.
Coming from all walks of life, there were those already working who switched to higher-paying defense jobs, those who had lost their jobs due to the Depression, and then there were the women who worked at home. Rosie the Riveter was the idol for these working women also she was known as the cover girl for the recruiting campaign. By 1944, 16 percent of all working women held jobs in war industries. While an estimated 18 million women worked during the war, there was growing concern among them that when the war was over, it would never be the same again. That new venture for American women would soon come to an end.
There are hundreds of documented cases where women were caught fighting in the war. They’d get caught when they got injured and had to be stripped of their clothing when being treated by nurses and surgeons. They weren't punished or praised by whoever caught them. They were just treated and sent home. Women were very brave for fighting in the war.