Propaganda and the Women of WWII

The American propaganda of 1941 – 1945 were aimed at persuading American women to become involved in supporting the war effort, encouraging them to fill roles previously filled by men, who were now in the various military branches fighting for freedom. As the war drew to a close the propaganda changed from asking women to leave their homes, to asking them to return to them. The American WWII propaganda were successful in gaining support for the war effort from women, but failed in the effort to return them to their previously held gender roles, at the conclusion of the war.

The purpose of propaganda aimed at women during WWII was three-fold. First to fill business gaps caused by the exodus of men from the workforce and into the armed forces. Secondly to enlist women in the armed forces to fill desk and noncombatant positions. Lastly to aid in supporting the troops any way they could from the home front. As men were leaving the workforce to join the military, vacancies had to be filled by women. In a time when women were seen primarily seen as homemakers, some business owners bulked initially. According to Lewis and Neville “Indeed, patriotism was used as a major recruiting device to lure women into the industrial workforce. The “Women’s Bureau” of the “War Manpower Commission” had to work hard to combat initial reluctance among employers to hire women. (quote within a quote from Anderson, Wartime Women, 27 – 28) These initial objections were, in part, overcome by advertising gender constructions that presented images of women at work while respecting the traditional separation of sex roles.” The propaganda must have worked because according to Lewis and Neville (1955) “five million women worked in the American labor force in 1920, by 1940 the number was at eleven million, and by 1944 more than nineteen million women worked in the United States.” Women were glad to keep the home and business fires going in support of husbands, brothers, or sons who were off fighting in the war. Norman Rockwell, created “Rosie, the Riveter, a character who gently satirized the millions of patriotic women who went into war work,” (Time Life Editors 1995, pg. 181), a character who became quite popular during and after the war. Propaganda was used in various media to encourage women to join the services in noncombatant positions. “The Women’s Reserve chose to rely on radio and newspaper publicity, rallies, posters, brochures, personal contact, and an invitation from Admiral Jacobs to join the “large, friendly family of the USN.””(Godson, 2001, pg. 115). Propaganda was plastered all over neighborhoods in the form of billboards and posters urging housewives to save bacon grease, and other household items to be recycled into war machinery. One such poster illustrated how “one old radiator will provide scrap steel needed for seventeen .30 calibre rifles. One old lawn mower will help make six 3-inch shells, one useless old tire will provide as much rubber as is used in 12 gas masks, and one old shovel will help make 4 hand grenades.” (Time Life Editors, 1995, pg. 163). Everyone collected what they could even “school children collected empty toothpaste tubes” (Time Life Editors, 1995, pg. 154). It seemed that no one in America was going to left out of the effort to win the war and bring home their troops quickly and safely.

The propaganda served to show them just how to do this. The propaganda campaign message was for women to leave their homes and fill in where they could in the world of business and they responded. They also responded by enlisting in the military, with astounding numbers. “The recruiting campaign produced results. By the end of 1942, there were 770 officers and 3,109 enlisted women in the WAVES. Their numbers rose steadily until the Women’s Reserve reached its peak strength of 86,291, including 8,475 officers, 73,816 enlisted, and about 4,000 in training on 31 July 1945.” (Godson, 2001, pg. 115). WWII turned out to be the catalyst that took America’s military from a “small military establishment to a leading military power with forces stationed around the globe” a significant contribution towards that military power was the that the war became the major turning point in the relationship of women in the armed forces. The military for the first time in history set out deliberately to “recruit large numbers of women to fill not only essential nursing positions, but to meet military requirements across a vast array of officer and enlisted skills. Before it was over, some 400,000 American women had answered the call of the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.” (Holm, 1998, pg. 1). Lewis and Neville quote many statistics regarding how images in ads and the percentage of them depicting women in various roles, they state that

“In 1940, women appeared as homemakers and/or mothers in 36% of all ads containing images of women. In 59% of these ads, women did not appear in occupational roles. No women appeared as members of the armed forces or volunteer organizations, and only 5% appeared as wage-earning workers. In 1943, images of women as wage earners increased substantially to 19%, while images of women in no discernible occupational role decreased substantially to 38%. While images of women as homemakers and/or mothers remained relatively stable at 30%, images of women as members of the armed forces or volunteer organizations increased to 13%. In 1946, images of women reverted to roughly the same level of prewar displays. Images of women as wage earners decreased to 7%. Women appeared in no discernible occupational role in 60% of the ads. Images of women as homemakers and/or mothers remained relatively constant at 33%. No women appeared as members of the armed forces or volunteer organizations.” This data clearly shows that propaganda indeed was designed to encourage women to leave their homes and enter both the workforce and the military during the war, but the images decreased markedly after the war. In response to these images not only did women enter the workforce in record numbers but they entered the military as the figures earlier in this paper indicate. Is it coincidence that the women entering the workforce and the military increased at the same time ads showing images of women being in the workforce and the military, Lewis and Neville felt that the government agencies clearly made repeated appeals to the advertising community to target women for job recruitment” and that “working women were a new group of consumers with considerable purchasing power – a seemingly important group for advertisers to target, as the trade journals Printer’s Ink and Advertising & Selling often pointed out in the early years of the war.” This clearly indicates that the propaganda was directed by the government to insure that women saw advertising encouraging them to work during the war and that they would receive benefits in the form of increased purchasing power. Despite women responding to the propaganda and enlisting, men were reluctant to use some of the women to their full potential. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a article concerning her view and her correspondent’s view on this subject, this is what she has to say, “It seems to me that in the civil air patrol and in our own ferry command women, if they can pass the tests imposed upon our men, should have an equal opportunity for noncombat service. I believe in this case, if the war goes on long enough and women are patient, opportunity will come knocking at their doors. However, there is just a chance that this is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used” (http://www.twu.edu/wasp/myday.pdf). It is clear from photographs taken from WWII that men in command did warm to the idea and as the war progressed, just as Eleanor predicted, women were given the chance to contribute more fully. The propaganda changed as the war came to an end, did it reflect what the women themselves felt they had to do? In 1944 Eleanor Roosevelt, a most refined and respected lady, wrote an article titled: Woman’s Place After the War. She is speaking with Mary Anderson, of the Bureau of Women in Industry, among other thoughts several are noteworthy here. One being that she writes: “I surmise that the major occupation of a married woman in this country at the close of the war will be what it has always been – the care of the family as long as the family requires her care. There will always be exceptions, of course, as when a woman must take on the burden of work outside the home to supplement what the man earns, or, if the man cannot work, even must assume the place of the head of the family and earn a living for the household.” It would seem that the main role women were expected to fill was a return to the status they had pre-war and that was as homemaker, caring for her husband and children. The main idea of the article seems to be that the decision to work outside the home should be an economic one. (Roosevelt, 1944). As to the propaganda machine at the conclusion and directly after the war, images appeared in publications depicting men and women in traditional pre-war roles. “Women’s images quickly underwent a drastic retransformation after the war. In advertisers’ schemes, women returned en masse to the kitchens of home nests with a song on their lips and uniformly cheerful smiles. The White Motor Company, for example, features an ad with an immaculately dressed mother and grandmother cooking and cleaning in a postwar house while grandchildren study. Juxtaposed with the image of the homemakers is an image of working men in a utility company truck ready to supply the power necessary for home appliances. It appears the message of the ad is indeed about power, not only electric power but power relations between men and women – the underlying meaning indicates that men should provide and women should nurture.” (Lewis and Neville, pg 224). This ad was typical of American publications whether in writing, photographs, comics, and women were shown images of happy housewives, nurturing children, cleaning homes, and serving their husbands. Typical as well was the message that the men were to assume being the provider, as before the war. The media then, as now, was a powerful, suggestive method that business and the government used to tell women, that there place was again, back in the home. Was the post war propaganda campaign successful? In regards to the military women, the propaganda campaign was not an influence, as for them, by law there was no choice. They had to leave the military and return to civilian life. According to Holm, “For the majority of women, getting out was hardly a choice. With the exception of the two nurse corps, there were no provisions for servicewomen in the postwar military. The laws authorizing the wartime WAC, WAVES, SPARs and Women Marine Reserve were due to expire six months after the President declared the war at an end.” (Holm, pg 147). It wasn’t until later years 1947 and on, that the U.S. government passed the Army-Navy Nurse Act giving women rights in the military. But the majority of post WWII military women expected to return to their homes and previous lives. Women as a whole, those who worked as well as those who were in the military during WWII did buy into the return to the housewife role. “Most women willingly took on the roles of wife and mother. They revisited the 1920s’ model of the wife-companion. Marriage rates soared to 118 per 1,000 women in 1946, up from 79 per 1,000 twenty years earlier.” (Godson, pg 155). But not all women gave up their roles in War held positions in business or in the Military. According to Godson, women “were frozen out of high-paying industrial jobs, women workers virtually took over office, sales and service positions. By 1950, 31 percent of women worked, but the primary change occurred in the composition of this labor force. As young, single women rushed to the altar, older married women moved into the work force and continued a trend that had begun during the war.” (Godson, pg 155). In conclusion, women were influenced greatly by the propaganda and did a tremendous job serving their country both in the military and in the work force during WWII. Women in the military and in the work force made huge contributions to the American military operations, so much so that they received praise even from the enemy, as stated by Holm, “Albert Speer, Adolph Hitler’s weapons production chief: How wise you were to bring your women into your military and into your labor force. Had we done that initially, as you did, it could well have affected the whole course of the War.” Women had many choices as the war ended, marriage being one of the most popular, education another, though with the Veterans Bill of Rights giving them monetary benefits to aid in education, men flocked to the universities, squeezing women from spaces in their rosters. “Although the number of women students rose from 568,604 in 1944 to 805,953 in 1950, their percentage of all enrolled students plummeted from 65 to 30.2” (Godson, pg 154). This statistic shows that women continued to place education in high regard. According to Evans, “Millions of women left the labor force, voluntarily and involuntarily; the women who stayed represented an increase in labor force participation consistent with previous trends. In other words, one could argue that the war itself made little difference. Ideologically, wartime propaganda justified the erosion of gender boundaries “for the duration”. The intense pressure on women to return to domesticity coincided with the wishes of a younger cohort of women and men to focus on their private lives.” (Evans, pg 240). This further illustrates the fact that women made the decision to work or not work, not solely on the propaganda present in their lives, but on economic, and social desires. Those who needed to work continued to work, those who wanted to marry and start families did so, those who were in the Army-Navy Nurse Corp and wanted to stay, did. Women made their choices as Eleanor Roosevelt surmised based on economics, and as most women do, even today, based on their own ideals and desires. They went about their business, attending college, and working and should Mr. Right happen by and love blossomed, they married. If their economics were such that they both had to work, then she worked. Women during WWII found themselves liberated in a way that gave them options. These options opened areas of their lives that allowed them to be more than housewives only, they could chose to be a business worker, or a student, or even be in the military, along with being a wife, or if unmarried, they could be a woman with choices. The propaganda at the close of WWII and just following the war, showed images of just one of the choices available a choice that before the war, had been their major role choice. Young women who longed for marriage followed the propaganda eagerly, older women and those hit by economic necessity, or those who had strong desires to, chose to remain in the work force, or in the military.

Reference Page:

Women Airforce Service Pilots. (2006, January 2). Archieved Collections, Oral History, Photographs and other history aides.
Texas Woman’s University. Retrieved May 2, 2006, from the World Wide Web:http://www.twu.edu/wasp/

Lewis, C., Neville, John. (1995). Images of Rosie: A Content Analysis of Women Workers in American Magazine Advertising, 1940-1946 [Electronic Version]. J&MC Quarterly Vol. 72, No. 1 Spring, 1995, 216-227.

Roosevelt, E., (1944). Woman’s Place After the War. [Electronic Version}. Click 7 August 1944: 17, 19 http://newdeal.feri.org/er/er15.htm

Godson, S H., (2001). Serving Proudly, A History of Women in the U.S. Navy. Washington Naval Yard, D.C., U.S.A.: Naval Institute Press.

Holm, J., Major General USAF (Retired), (1998). In Defense of a Nation, Servicewomen in World War II. Washington, D.C., U.S.A.: Vandamere Press.

Time Life Editors., (1969). This Fabulous Century 1940 – 1950 Volume V. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Time-Life Books. Evans, S., (1989). Born for Liberty, New York, NY. Free Press Paperbacks.