At work during world war ii. You can find it on the National Archives website. But well talk about that. But well talk about these different parts of women american women during world war ii. Were just hitting the survey, theres so much we can talk about throughout the entire semester, and we do all of u. S. And world war ii, except we cant do all of it so we do our bits and pieces. Weve already talked about some of these. Some will be familiar. Especially when we get to women at work part. But then well go from there. Be sure to stop me if you have any questions and well do our thing. So women at home. So when we think about this one of the biggest things i want you to do today is think about this reality for the homefront, which is mainly what were talking about, and the reality of what life meant for women in the war. With one of the first that we often think about is all the men going away to war. The men are going off. That means who is left behind . The women. Right . The women. So a lot of the women are married. We talked about there are all sorts of quickie weddings going on. But people who have been married for a while as well decide, how do you get by . If youre a household with a husband and a wife in this time period, you know, its a partnership and each has their role and theyre much more defined roles in world war ii than today. So this idea of how are you going to do both your job as the wife and often the mother, and the job of the husband . How do you do this . This is a very popular book, this came out in 19 42. So your husbands gone to war. This idea of what do you do . How do you get through it . You can see from the cover tackling male chorse. Because chores were defined by male and female,. And any woman, any widow, any woman like that does everything. Right . If you live on your own you do your own thing, put your own libet bulbs in make your own repairs. But this book gives some guidance. This book to help women know how to do those little maintenance jobs that they needed to. This is my favorite part. The wolves in the friends clothing. This idea that weve got wolves. That was the phrase of the day about you know what that means right . They pretend to be helpful. Oh, ill come change your light bulb for you. Let me help. But really theyre you know. Not quite as nice as they seem. How do you distinguish between the wolf and the real friend . Then theres part up in the upper right corner is something thats really important. Women had a lot of responsibility not just to do their work and things like this but this is the lost art of letter writing. This idea that women were responsible for keeping up the morale of men. This is going to be a theme that well have through this entire section. The idea that women are responsible for making men remember what theyre fighting for, making men feel confident, making men feel that its ok for them to be away but theyre missed and they need to come home. So this lost art of letter writing. She writes this whole chapter about how to write your letters to your men. Theres articles in womens magazines, theres articles in mainstream newspapers. All these editorials about how women should write their letters. So what do you think you want to put in your letter if youre writing to johnny whos away in surep fighting against the germans . What do you want to put in your letter as youre writing from home . What would you put in there . Dont worry about how things are going here. Just focus on getting the job done. Dont worry about how things are, focus on getting the job done, were ok here. You have to realize they want you to write multiple letters a week. If you can write daily thats best. Imagine your soldier is going to get mail every day and if theres nothing there, how tee pressing. Nobody cares about me. Thats the guilt. So the presure is to write every day three days a week four, five days a week at the minimum. So you write that once. Then what the do you write . Then what else do you do . We miss you. Please come home. Right . But you cant do too much of that or it will make him foo sad. Right . Too sad. Focus on the war. Right. A fun story. So a piece of advice that goerman puts in her book is make yourself interesting so your letters are interesting. Do interesting things. But dont be too interesting because he will think youre having fun while hes a war. You have to find that balance being being interesting and not being interesting. So what if they dont have a sweetheart at home . Are there women getting together to write let torse strangers to help out . Yes. Theres this whole campaign that can be through the red cross or different organizations where soldiers would give their names and women would write letters. You have romances that grow out of that. This idea of writing letters, talking about whats going on at home. What if your roof gets a leak . Should you write johnny about that . I dont know. Right . Its this balance between maybe you wait until the leak is fixed and then you tell johnny hey the roof had a leak but we got it fixed. But you dont want to seem too efficient, because if the roof leaks and the plumbing breaks and all these things and you take care of it, why does johnny need to come home . So its a lot of pressure on these women to write these letters in these very specific ways. High volume, positive. You can say you miss him but you cant be too blue. Youve got to find this balance of being responsible and hip not needing to worry but still needing him to come home. You can get by but hurry home. So its this balance. And this pressure on women that gets put, again, youve got whole books about it but in different forms of media about womens responsibilitys to write these letters. And the men, i read a lot of these letters coming back. We dont have as many letters of the women going overseas, these letters that the women wrote we dont see as many because the men didnt keep them. Where the women kept the letters that the men wrote from overseas. So we have more of those. So we can figure out what the women were talking about by how the men respond. Thats one of the ways that we can determine what went into those letters. You see a lot of anxiety from the men, especially about the wolves. Right . Theres a lot of ideas about the men who dont serve, who arent able to serve or have these different positions domestically and that theyre going to try to steal the women. And thats actually a campaign that the germans and the japanese both used in leaflet campaigns, is the men back home are stealing your girl. Dont you wish the war was over and you could go home . So this idea of the letter writing and things. And the fact that this is an incredibly popular book in 1942 says a lot, i think, that women are working on this and going forward. So other responsibilities that the women had. We talked a little bit about the rationing. Well talk about it more in another week. But this idea of weve got all this rationing. Because who is the United States responsible for feeding during the war . Pretty much everybody. Lets narrow that down a little. Thats good. But who are we responsible for feeding this our allies. The allies. Were going to get food to the russians, the british, and all that entails. Who else do we need to feed . Our people. Our soldiers. The men and women who have gone abroad. Were responsible for feeding them. The british arent going to pull out fish and chips for our soldiers. Who is the third group . People were rescuing. Yes. The home front. The people back home need to eat as well. So weve got rationing so we can get all that manufacturing that we talked about already. But then that reality of food and who is going to eat and who we are responsible for feeding. So theres a lot of emphasis on women growing those Victory Gardens. Grow those Victory Gardens, grow vitamins. Theres a huge growth in the study of nutrition this this time period because you want to get as much nutrition in as little food as possible. Then this idea of what are women going to do . Well, youve got to can that. Its one thing to grow a Victory Garden but if its done by the end of summer thats no good. So this idea of canning. Am i proud. Im fighting by canning at home. This is hard but im doing it. I love this one with the little girl, well have lots to eat this winter. Wont we mother . As we go through these were going to see a lot of these posters and different images. I want you to note things like the race of these women being portrayeded. The appearance of them. These are pretty perfect, that little girl is so cute you could pinch her cheeks. And this idea of who is being represented, which audience are these government posters trying to reach . Now, another thing thats used so women get used in a number of different ways. Weve got this pressure to try to get women to take action. But weve also got the effort to use women as propaganda pieces to achieve other goals. What do you see in this image . What do you think of this . Sacrifice. Is she a perky cleancut gal . Well, she might have used to have been. What is she now . Scared. Does she look very happy . No. Right . The babieslaughing. But the little girl is clinging to her, not quite knowing whats going on. But the woman looks kind of sad and scared and, i gave a man. Remember when we talked about the soviets and how the americans are like, youve got to do more and theyre like we gave blood, you give money. Shes saying a gave a man. My children dont have a father. Im alone and scared. Can you at least give 10 of your pay to buy a war bond . That is the very least you can do. Look at the sacrifice my family has made. This is the very least you can do. So women being used to for guilt to make you feel this pressure to buy war bonds. Now, review, why do we need war bonds . What are the war bonds for . For equipment and supplies going out. We need it because we talked about how expensive the war is. And war bonds are one way that we pay for it. Its basically loaning money to the government so that you can so that the government can afford the war. This is another way women are portrayed. So information is important. And theres all sorts of campaigns out there. Dont talk about whats in johnnys letters. Anybody can be listening. And this idea wanted for murder. What does she look like . If she was in a movie which would she be . The villain. Or the neighbor gossip. Because women just cant help themselves. Thats the impression thats given in so many of these images. Again, ive got about 20 of these that we could look at. This idea that women just cant help themselves gossipping. But her gossip cost lives. Maybe his life. So this idea that women need to control themselves, resist their natural urge to gossip. Women are used for sex. This is a whole famous series of prints that im sure you have seen before. Shes a wac. Shes in the military but not in this moment shes not. But this is mainstream. This is a picture that came out of life magazine. So this is a mainstream image of the idea of women as the sexualized being because youve got to think about why were fighting. Were fighting so we can get home to the girl. Were fighting so we can get home and because this is what all girls look like apparently. This reality. But they cant be so women are supposed to be sexual. Theyre supposed to be pretty, theyre supposed to be sexual so the men will know what theyre fighting for. But they cant be too sexual. Give you a minute to take a look at these. How are women portrayed . Spreading disease. This is my favorite. She may look clean but. Theres a whole series of these images that are given to men at the different bases and overseas. You know, whole classes on venereal disease. But this idea that these goodtime girls and p pickups, these are a problem. So we want to give you posters like this to hang up but dont touch because they probably are diseased. So this idea that women as all these Different Things, women are mothers, women are raising the gardens and saving and feeding everyone and women are sacrificing, women are writing letters and being good for morale. Women are these sexual beings. And women are also diseased. All these things all at the same time, this idea of i just think this is right . And again theres a whole series of these that are out there and theyre promoted among all these men. applause so thats our women at home. Whats o our next topic, this idea of women at work. And we think of this a lot when we think of women in world war ii we often think of these working women. This is the point of the class, the section of the course. You know my favorite thing is to be a myth buster. Thats what we do. Thats our job. So this section were going to bust some myths. So when we think of women working in world war ii, one of the biggest things that is often talked about is the idea that women go to work. Ok, all the women go to work. Now, do you remember your u. S. History class . What did you learn about women working this did women work before world war ii . No . Not according to my survey class. What about in the factories at the turn of the century . What about those immigrant women . Wasnt as widespread and it wasnt mothers. So all those factories that came out through the Industrial Revolution and all those children, that child labor, did women not work in those factories . Lots of young single women, lots of immigrant women. What about women of color this did they work . You think so . Yeah. Well, women of color didnt get a lot of teaching jobs. Coming up to here they do. Coming out of the progressive era we get more women of color taking middle class jobs. But women have always worked. Youve always had workingclass women. Workingclass women, immigrant women, women of color, unmarried women that have always worked. So which women are we really talking about when we say women began to work during world war ii . Middle class white women. This expansion into this area that people didnt work before. Then a second group tied in there is going to be mothers. More mothers are going to work in world war ii than worked before. So its a shift from workingclass women, immigrant women, women of color working. To that expansion of middle class white women. Thats what we often see portrayed in these posters. Look at these women. First, their teeth are perfect, which did not happen in the 19 40s. They all look like movie stars. Their eye brows just right, their hair just right. Theyre beautiful. This is not what most people ever look like let alone in the 40s. But this idea of who the target is. Whos the target for the working . Because this is the group that we have in excess that we can target to get to work. Thats an important distinction i want to make sure that we understand which women were talking about when we say the workforce expanded to women. Its a specific group of women that are going to be expanded. Now, one area that often doesnt get talked about in women working in world war ii is women in agriculture. This idea of women in agriculture. So its important to realize that we have over 6 million agricultural laborors and farmers that leave the land during world war ii. Over 6 Million People who had been working the land leaf it during world war ii. These are often going to be men who are going to work in the factories because theyre better paid. These are going to be men who are being drafted or enlisting. The shortage of laborers gets so bad during the war that by the middle and late 1942 it becomes a draftdeferred position. Whats draftdeferred position . You dont have to go over to the war. Your job is war critical. Your job is war critical so you cannot be drafted. If you leave that job you may be eligible for the draft but if youre in that position. So they become draft deferred because we need people so badly. That doesnt mean you cant enlist. That doesnt mean you cant go work in a factory. By late in the war there are limits. You have to get permission to do that. So were at the same moment that were expanding the agricultural needs because were feeding people at home, were feeding americans abroad, and then were feeding all of o our allies. Helping feed our allies. At the same time were doing that, the laborers are shrinking. So theres a huge push to get american women involved in this. And we had seen this before. We had seen this in world war with one. There was a volunteer Organization Called the Womens Land Army of america that was around. We expand that in world war ii. There was Womens Land Army in Great Britain and we model a lot of what goes on in the United States after that. But theres this huge push to get american women as part of this. There were other organizations. The brasero program. To allow workers to come work in the field. The agreement between the United States and mexico to allow laborers to come to the United States and work. This program goes from 1942 to 1951. So this is a huge program well talk about in another class. But they tried that to the government tried that to expand the number of laborers. They also go to convicts, prison labor, which had been used some in the past but gets expanded. They also use pows. We had some in texas and in oklahoma and in different regions of the country where you would have german and italian pows that would come to the United States and put them in the farms. Let them be laborers. So youve got all these different groups. Then this huge push, lets get more women to do this. Some basic numbers for you. We end up with Something Like 3. 5 million women working in the agricultural fields. Which is a much bigger number than you think of. You think of world war ii, usually we think of rosie the rivetter or the women pilots because were here and have me as a professor. But 3. 5 million women are recruited. Theres some bias against some in the beginning. You can read a lot of documents about this idea that women arent going to be able to do the job. We cant trust them. This idea of urban women especially. Nobody wants a city girl to come work on their farm. Theyre going to break their heel and not be able to do it. But very quickly the women prove themselves, that theyre able to do the work that needs to be done and make a real difference. Some basic numbers. 1940, women made up 8 of all farm workers. By 1945, it was 23 . So women went from 8 in agriculture to 23 in agriculture just that quickly. Again, the this is all going to shrink back down after the war just because we arent growing as much after the war. But thats a significant amount 3. 5 million women working on fars. A new costume idea for you for halloween. Dress up like a farm worker. Womens land army. Everybody does rosie. Now, this idea of women in labor. So this is you cant talk about women at work without talking about this. Who do you see here . Rosie the rivetter. This is another part of the class that im going to bust s