World War II playlist:
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‘World War II-vintage film on health and occupational safety issues facing women workers…Old-time footage of male workers leaving factory door and dispersing…MS line of women punching in at time clock and entering plant…HA looking down at women walking by on sidewalk…VS women in machine shop…foreman explains dangers of hair, jewelry, high heeled shoes and skirts to woman dissolves into same woman dressed in sensible, safe gear (pants, hairnet, flats)…’
Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
Wikipedia license:
American women in World War II became involved in many tasks they rarely had before; as the war involved global conflict on an unprecedented scale, the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable. The hard skilled labor of women was symbolized in the United States by the concept of Rosie the Riveter, a woman factory laborer performing what was previously considered man’s work.
With this expanded horizon of opportunity and confidence, and with the extended skill base that many women could now give to paid and voluntary employment, American women’s roles in World War II were even more extensive than in the First World War. Women worked in the war industries, building ships, aircraft, vehicles, and weaponry. Women also worked in factories, munitions plants and farms; drove trucks; provided logistic support for soldiers; and entered professional areas of work that were previously the preserve of men. Women also enlisted as nurses serving on the front lines, and there was a great increase in the number of women serving for the military itself.
During World War II, approximately 400,000 U.S. women served with the armed forces and more than 460 — some sources say the figure is closer to 543 — lost their lives as a result of the war, including 16 from enemy fire. However, the U.S. decided not to use women in combat because public opinion would not tolerate it. Women became officially recognized as a permanent part of the U.S. armed forces after the war, with the passing of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948.
Both men and women of some ethnic groups were also placed in internment camps in the United States during World War II…
By the end of World War I, twenty-four percent of workers in aviation plants, mainly located along the coasts of the United States were women, and yet this percentage was easily surpassed by the beginning of World War II. Mary Anderson, director of the Women’s Bureau, reported in January 1942 that about 2,800,000 women “are now engaged in war work, and that their numbers are expected to double by the end of this year.”
The skills women had acquired through their daily chores proved to be very useful in helping them acquire new skill sets towards the war effort. Since men that usually did certain jobs were out at war, women tried to replace them. For example, the pop culture phenomenon of “Rosie the Riveter” made riveting one of the most widely known jobs. Experts speculate women were so successful at riveting because it so closely resembled sewing (assembling and seaming together a garment). However, riveting was only one of many jobs that women were learning and mastering as the aviation industry was developing. As Glenn Martin, a co-founder of Martin Marietta, told a reporter: “we have women helping design our planes in the Engineering Departments, building them on the production line, [and] operating almost every conceivable type of machinery, from rivet guns to giant stamp presses”.
It is true that some women chose more traditional female jobs such as sewing aircraft upholstery or painting radium on tiny measurements so that pilots could see the instrument panel in the dark. And yet many others, maybe more adventurous, chose to run massive hydraulic presses that cut metal parts while others used cranes to move bulky plane parts from one end of the factory to the other. They even had women inspectors to ensure any necessary adjustments were made before the planes were flown out to war often by female pilots. The majority of the planes they built were either large bombers or small fighters…
