An American History

880 ★ CHAPTER 22 Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II

employers, and unions depicted work as

a temporary necessity, not an expansion

of women’s freedom. Advertisements

assured women laboring in factories

that they, too, were “fighting for free-

dom.” But their language spoke of sac-

rifice and military victory, not rights,

independence, or self-determination.

One union publication even declared,

“There should be a law requiring the

women who have taken over men’s jobs

to be laid off after the war.” When the

war ended, most female war workers,

especially those in better-paying indus-

trial employment, did indeed lose their

jobs.

Despite the upsurge in the num-

ber of working women, the advertisers’

“world of tomorrow” rested on a vision

of family-centered prosperity. Like Nor-

man Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paint-

ings, these wartime discussions of freedom simultaneously looked forward to a

day of material abundance and back to a time when the family stood as the bed-

rock of society. The “American way of life” celebrated during the war centered on

the woman with “a husband to meet every night at the door,” and a home stocked

with household appliances and consumer goods. Advertisements portrayed

working women dreaming of their boyfriends in the army and emphasized that

with the proper makeup, women could labor in a factory and remain attractive

to men. Men in the army seem to have assumed that they would return home

to resume traditional family life. In one wartime radio program, a young man

described his goal for peacetime: “Havin’ a home and some kids, and breathin’

fresh air out in the suburbs... livin’ and workin’ decent, like free people.”

VISIONS OF POSTWAR FREEDOM

Toward an American Century

The prospect of an affluent future provided a point of unity between New Deal-

ers and conservatives, business and labor. And the promise of prosperity to

some extent united two of the most celebrated blueprints for the postwar world.

One was The American Century, publisher Henry Luce’s 1941 effort to mobilize

This photograph captures the enthusiasm of
three “fly girls”—female pilots employed by the
air force to deliver cargo and passengers and
test military aircraft. Known as WASPs (Women
Airforce Service Pilots), they eventually num-
bered over 1,000 aviators, who trained at an
all-female base at Avenger Field in Sweetwater,
Texas. They did not take part in combat, but
thirty-eight died in service.