Slacks and Calluses Slacks and Calluses by Constance Bowman Reid entails the coming of social rights for women in the United States. The coming of World War I brought some changes to social classes in the United States, but it was World War II that would define women’s rights for years to come. Two women, Clara Marie Allen and Constance Bowman Reid, decide to engage in patriotism doing their part with their summer off from being a school teacher. They take a job at a bomber factory working the swing, or night shift. Once entering the work force, Reid and Allen find out what it is really like to be a woman in an unaccepting workplace filled with men. In the text, the unfair and unjust treatment of women in the workplace are revealed to full …show more content…
Most women were expected to work on the farms or in the household and to raise children. When industry came to the country, it provided women the opportunity to seek new environments. However, women’s tough transition did not come with welcome arms by the country. “If you don’t think there’s a difference (between women wearing slacks and skirts), put on a Consolidated uniform and try getting service at your favorite store, make a reservation, or get information at the post office,” (Bowman Reid, 67). This quote explains that some women were refused service for wearing slacks and working in factories. 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. Others, like Bowman and Allen, decided they wanted to support the war effort and the only way to do that was to take their place in the industry. “Anybody who thought we had been motivated by anything but patriotism in its purest form could just look at our pay-checks after the government got through with them,” (Bowman Reid, 173). This shows that most
“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.
According to Ware: “Women who sought relief or paid employment risked public scorn or worse for supposedly taking jobs and money away from more deserving men.” Ware goes on to show why this idea was flawed. To begin with, many women were the sole source of financial support for themselves or their families. Furthermore, the jobs that women mainly got were in what we now consider traditionally women work, such as nurses, or sectaries.
World War 2 was happening and the nation needed all the help it could get at this point. This meant embracing the fact that women would have to leave the house and start working different jobs. The women in Slacks and Calluses worked to help increase war production by building bombers. There were women from many different backgrounds working at Consolidated, some schoolteachers, students, and mothers. Women working these factory jobs were not given special treatment just because they were women.
However, it was not only within the industrial arena that class disputes further divided the new nation. As the war progressed, Michael McKernan asserts, “class tensions were exacerbated as middle class commentators criticised the working classes for a perceived lack of commitment to the war effort”. Middle class women, their gender role linked to patriotic participation in the war effort through
Not only were the women recruited into the old jobs vacated by the men, who had gone to fight in the war, but new jobs were also created as part of the war effort. The government’s attitude towards female employment at first was negative as they were reluctant to allow the women to do any jobs left by the men. This later changed, as the government began pushing forward the idea of employment of women through campaigns and recruitment drives. Working as railway guards and ticket collectors, buses and tram conductors, postal workers, police, firefighters and as bank tellers and clerks, women began to change the concept of what was before deemed as ‘men’s
These women worked in deplorable working conditions, for a ludicrous number of hours each week, and earned meager compensation. Although to modern readers, the women’s working conditions alone seem horrific, at this time, these conditions were far from uncommon across factories in
In San Diego during World War II, there were two types of women: the women who wore skirts to work and the women who wore slacks (Bowman Reid, 67.) The garments had powerful class implications in the workplace and on the street. “It was bad enough being tired all the time and dirty most of the time, but worst of all the first week was having to go to work in slacks – down Fourth Street where people who knew us acted as if they didn’t, or down Third Street where people who didn’t know us whistled as if
In the months leading up to World War Two, additional labor was needed in the United States. Men had to fight in the war, so they left their jobs unoccupied. Women were needed to work in the war front, as well as in “essential civilian” jobs--jobs that kept the home front running smoothly. Examples of these occupations are teachers, taxi drivers, child-care workers, bank tellers, restaurant workers, and police officers (Colman). Housewives were the only group of people who were not contributing to the war efforts, or in Teresa English’s words “the only untapped demographic.”
The book is based on the inequality in the work force that is applied in gender and race within the
Several social changes in the post-war years opened women to feminism's message. P. 2, The demand for a larger and more skilled labor pool generated by the Cold War, and postwar consumer economy were the driving force cause American society to become more open to feminism’s message. No doubt WW II created the demand for expanded women’s roles in the workplace, Document 1. Having proved their equal abilities during the war, they stood ready willing and able to contribute moving forward. Nevertheless attitudes toward women staying in the workforce after World War II were not favorable.
Shortly after the men started leaving to go into war women began to break away from their traditional house roles. Due to the men leaving for the war, the work force started to decrease. Women began to fill mens shoes in jobs such as bank clerks, ticket sellers, chauffeurs, elevator operators, etc. as a result. Labor Unions were adamant that women not work in the factories.
During the civil war women had to find jobs or maybe even try and make their own job, because men had to fight and women never knew if they would see
This comes to no surprise considering the fact that many people including Marjorie Hill and their families on the West coast, California in particular, weren’t necessarily struggling. During the war, California’s large agricultural industry grew dramatically to meet the needs of wartime. The state eventually became a leading manufacturing center. During wartime, California industries also hired many Women, African Americans, and Mexican Americans to replace the men that had left for the war. Thus, giving jobs to many that had never typically been considered to occupy.
Yet, women were expected to set aside their personal beliefs to insure that America could still make further advancements without its men. However, women still complied because they knew the responsibility laid with them to keep the nation running. Still, much of propaganda had a purpose to motivate women to lend a helping hand in the war. As Susan Mathis said, “The patriotic appeal had two aspects… ‘do your part’... ‘a soldier may die if you don’t do your part’...”
In the article it says that women entered jobs like engineering, other professions, and manufacturing jobs that many people believed that those jobs were too dangerous for women and women were too weak. In their jobs, women made airplanes, warships, munitions, and tanks working in technical and scientific fields. Also, after the war, women were still employed as secretaries, waitresses, or in other clerical jobs. This was often called the “pink collar” force. This article shows how sometimes women are given clerical jobs that show people underestimate the abilities of women.