World War and the Growth of Global Power 267cutting out dresses, this woman stamps out the patterns of airplane parts....
Instead of baking cakes, this woman is cooking gears to reduce the tension in
the gears after use. [And] after a short apprenticeship, a woman can operate this
drill press as easily as a juice extractor in her own kitchen.” During the war, the
actual face of labor changed dramatically as the War Department encouraged
millions of women to become employees in defense plants and government
offices. Employers were urged to tap into the “vast resource of womanpower”
as a remedy for the wartime labor shortage caused by the removal of up to 16
million men who were in the military. At the same time, the expansion of the
wartime defense industry also demanded more and more workers.
War industry factories, including both government-sponsored and private
sector manufacturers, absorbed millions and millions of women workers dur-
ing the war years. Six million women took jobs for the first time during
WWII, transforming the American workforce. In 1940, women made up less
than 25 percent of the entire United States labor force; by the summer of
1944, the percentage jumped to 35. The number of married women employed
doubled during the war. Over 800,000 women were in a union in 1940, but
by 1944, 3 million had joined one. The number of females in defense plants
rose a whopping 460 percent. States lifted bans on laws regarding women in
heavy industry and modified and removed protective labor laws on night work
and overtime to encourage employment. While most female workers took
jobs in manufacturing, an additional million performed clerical work in vari-
ous federal bureaucratic offices, doubling the clerical workforce by 1945.
Other women joined the armed forces for the first time ever. The Women’s
Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) formed soon after the Pearl Harbor incident.
In 1943, female pilots ferried planes to bases, tested the aircrafts for accurate
performance, and even flew noncombat missions. Other women served as
volunteers in bond drives, the Red Cross, and ration committees.
But it was the female factory worker who was perhaps the most visible
symbol during the war, primarily due to massive propaganda to encourage
more women to take industrial jobs. Women assembled machine guns, air-
plane frames, parachutes, propellers, artillery, munitions, engines, and gas
masks. Women operated hand drills, band saws, and rivet guns—hence, gov-
ernment films about the “glamour girls” in industry. Other war advertisements
featured Hollywood heroines such as Lucille Ball working in a defense plant
and Claudette Colbert welding. The wildly popular “Rosie the Riveter” image,