A Film Analysis of Intersectionality and Gender Binary Thinking in The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) by Connie Field
This film study will define the intersectionality of race and gender roles that defined the ability of women to “men’s jobs” during World War II in The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) by Connie Field. In this film many women from the lower and middle classes tended to work in factories or they have been domestic servants in the home. In Field’s film, women from primarily lower-middle class backgrounds (also unmarried0 found an economic opportunity to get paid higher wages for doing “men’s work” in the production of wartime products, such as airplanes, tanks, and other forms of weaponry.
These economic
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In many cases, lower class women were able to get much higher wages, which enabled them to leave behind domestic service jobs that paid them much less. More so, the racialization of “domestic servitude” was primarily placed onto people of color, since African Americans were racially marginalized by white racism in the labor market. In one interview done by Fields, Lyn Childs defines the problem of gender binary thinking, which alienated women from “men’s work” in the industrial manufacturing sector of the American …show more content…
Childs’ important “opportunity” comes in being able to work in a non-racialized environment, but more importantly, it provided working class women with a higher wage in order to free them from Middle class servitude as domestic servants in the patriarchal household. In this manner, the white female workers of WWII factories were able to escape low paying jobs, but at the same time, they were able to avoid the pitfalls of domestic servitude in the domestic sphere of middle class
The second World War resulted in a demand for workers after men began leaving for the war. Due to a lot of the working men in America going overseas as well as the demand for war products, women became a major source of labor. Propaganda began to address women, persuading them that it was their duty to start working for the men. The film The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter gives personal accounts of some of the hardships women faced in the era surrounding WWII, and how the media was used to create a desire for women to work.
“Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory” is a book that describes the summer of two teachers, Constance Bowman Reid and Clara Marie Allen, working in a bomber factory for the military of the United States. This book explains how women’s role in society began to change during the time of World War II. Throughout this book, the author, Constance Bowman Reid, describes the way they were treated due to being female, how the country felt about women going to work in factories during the summer of 1943, and why women decided to work in bomber factories for the US during World War II. Constance Reid describes how there were many things that defined women such as what clothes they wore and what they occupation they carried. During this era, women were known to be classy in ways like females usually wore skirts in public and had careers as nurses or teachers.
The 1940’s was a time where American women stepped up to help their country in a time of war, "but most of these women -- the famous and the obscure -- had one thing in common: they did not think of themselves as heroes. They followed their consciences, saw something that needed to be done, and they did it…". Rosie the Riveter on the "We Can Do It!" poster was made by the War Production Co-Ordinating Committee to persuade women to work in factories and shipyards during World War II. From World War II till the present, the "We Can Do It!"
We Can Do It: The True Impact of Rosie the Riveter Clad in a blue denim shirt draping over her robust figure, the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter was prevalent in shaping the perception of women in the late 20th century. While there was no drive for incorporating women into the workforce during the pre-World War II era, at the start of World War II, the labor shortage in the USA led to the government and media turning to women for support (Hoyt). By empowering women and calling for them to aspire to do their part to aid their country in popular propaganda, the campaign attracted women from varying backgrounds to the workforce during World War II (Honey, 49). While originally appealing to jingoistic attitude by collectively bringing women
As some of their husbands were away fighting during Second World War, it was the wife's duty to take on more roles, that usually men did. Unlike African women, White women had more of a variety of military work jobs that were available to them. In lectures provided to us from Professor Stonis there were a lot of propaganda posters. In particular what they would be called the Rosie the Riveter, perhaps the most iconic image of recruiting female workers, the propaganda showed a strong Rosie with a bandana and working outfit, which was successful in targeting white women to work the aircraft industry. Not only where white women able to work in the aircraft industry, but also eligible to serve as pilots.
Child Labor Analysis Child Labor was one of Florence Kelley’s main topics at a speech she gave in Philadelphia during a convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Kelley talks about all the horrors children were going through and the injustices they were suffering. She talks of the conditions children working in, the hours they were going in, and all in all, how wrong child labor was. Her purpose for this was to gain support of people to petition for the end of child labor. Kelley’s appeals to Ethos, Pathos and Logos through the use of great rhetoric is what allows her to achieve her purpose.
In her essay, “The Importance of Work,” from The Feminine Mystique published in 1963, Betty Friedan confronts American women’s search for identity. Throughout the novel, Betty Friedan breaks new ground, concocting the idea that women can discover personal fulfillment by straying away from their original roles. Friedan ponders on the idea that The Feminine Mystique is the cause for a vast majority of women during that time period to feel confined by their occupations around the house; therefore, restricting them from discovering who they are as women. Friedan’s novel is well known for creating a different kind of feminism and rousing various women across the nation.
The Cold War was a time in history when there was a great political and military turmoil between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War shaped the world in these three ways, women’s rights, society,Cultural. These three changed people in positive and negative ways. Once again, women were called upon to fulfill a role in the defense of America on one hand to perpetuate the American population and on the other to promote American ideals abroad. Women had a chance to be equal to men.
In retrospect, “Rosie the Riveter” propaganda has a bitter edge to it. It would hard to imagine how some women would feel used after they got a taste of self-sufficiency purpose and as soon as the wartime ended these purposes for women were no longer needed. These women were rejected out of their jobs in the post-war years (Wallace, 2011). Without the women’s help in America’s industries, it would be hard for America to overpower and obtain its supremacy to help its allies in Russia and England to defeat Germany. The journey of Rosie was indeed an important influence on the women around the world, because she was able to show capability of women to do more than house chores and tend to the needs of her children.
Many believed in the traditional idea that the workplace was for men only and used the refusal of recognition as a form of protest. Some women refused to go into the work force for this very reason. For those that did however, did so out of patriotism for the war and because of the lack of opportunity. There was a mix between the two. In the text, most women were there for lack of opportunity because they were high school dropouts.
More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry. One example is Rosie the Riveter, she was mostly known for helping the United States to recruit women to work. (document 1) She was in newspapers, movies, posters, photographs, and articles. Rosie the Riveter represents the American women who worked in factories and
Children from as young as the age of 6 began working in factories, the beginning of their exploitation, to meet demands of items and financial need for families. In Florence Kelley’s speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia 1905, Kelley addresses the overwhelming problem of child labor in the United States. The imagery, appeal to logic, and the diction Kelley uses in her speech emphasizes the exploitation of children in the child labor crisis in twentieth century America. Kelley’s use of imagery assists her audience in visualizing the inhumanity of the practice.
Dating back to World War II the United States was immensely preoccupied with the war front. Their continuous worry about having enough ammunition put many people to work. Around the 1940s, many individuals were asked to work jobs they usually would not have been offered. There was a simple phase of false hope for the struggling families. Readers have had a chance to see the reality behind the era of World War II through the documents left behind in Chapter 13: Gender, Race, and Sexuality During World War II of Sharon Block’s book Major Problems in American History Volume II: Since 1865 and also Chapter 8: Origins of the Civil Rights Movement of Thomas Holt’s book Major Problems in African American History.
Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.
The 1980 film, The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, was able to open many eyes to how important women were in our entry to World War II. Woman’s fight in our culture is still very much real when trying to establish themselves in our workforce. Another film, A League of Their Own, added some comedy to the subject, but focused on the same time frame as World War II struggles for our