Rosie the Riveter Gets Married

Abstract

During WWII, women were encouraged to join the workforce in the US as men left jobs to join the armed forces. However, it is argued that traditional gender ideology kept women from fully embracing ideals of women's rights & employment as they identified themselves not just as workers, but also as wives, mothers, & girlfriends of absent men. The greatest social & economic freedoms women experienced during WWII were viewed as emergency measures only, not as a shift in societal mores. The dislocations of the war resulted in the desire for a return to domesticity & "normality" in the postwar period, reaffirming women's traditional roles as homemakers & mothers. J. Ferrari