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World War II · The American home front, 1941–1945
Rosie the Riveter: Women in the War Factories
With millions of men in uniform, America turned to its women to build the weapons of war. More than six million women took jobs for the first time, riveting bombers, welding ships and loading shells. Their work helped make the United States the “arsenal of democracy” and changed American life for good.
“We Can Do It!” J. Howard Miller’s 1943 poster for Westinghouse
Quick facts
Women war workers at a glance
| When | December 1941 to August 1945, peaking in 1944 | |
| How many | Women’s workforce grew from about 12 million (1940) to about 18 million (1944); roughly 6 million joined | |
| Where | Aircraft plants, shipyards, ordnance and ammunition plants, steel mills, auto plants converted to tanks and trucks | |
| Who | Wives, mothers, teenagers and grandmothers; white, Black, Latina, Asian American and Native American women | |
| Pay | Far better than prewar “women’s jobs,” but on average only about 60% of men’s factory pay | |
| Childcare | Federal Lanham Act centers, plus round-the-clock Kaiser centers in Portland | |
| Symbol | “Rosie the Riveter,” from a 1942 hit song, Norman Rockwell’s 1943 cover, and the “We Can Do It!” poster |
The big picture in 30 seconds
Why women in the factories mattered
- About 16 million Americans served in the armed forces, emptying the factories just as war orders exploded.
- Women filled the gap: by 1943 they were about 65% of the aircraft industry’s workforce, up from 1% before the war.
- U.S. factories built about 300,000 aircraft and 2,700 Liberty ships, more than the Axis powers could match.
- After the war many women were laid off, but the idea that women could do “men’s work” never went away.
6 million+
women entered the workforce during the war
310,000
women in U.S. aircraft plants in 1943
1 in 3
American workers was a woman by 1945
3,000+
federally funded child care centers
The manpower crisis
Why America needed its women
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States had a small army and factories that were still making cars, refrigerators and radios. Within months the government ordered tens of thousands of planes, tanks and ships. At the same time the draft and volunteers pulled about 16 million men, and some women, into uniform. Factories faced an impossible math problem: twice the work and far fewer workers.
Before the war, most employers would not hire women for heavy industrial jobs, and many people believed a married woman belonged at home. By 1942 that view could no longer survive the labor shortage. The new War Manpower Commission, created in April 1942, and the Office of War Information launched a nationwide campaign to bring “womanpower” into the plants.
Selling factory work
Posters, newsreels, radio programs and magazine ads told women that war work was patriotic, well paid and something they could learn quickly. Ads compared running a drill press to running a sewing machine and following a blueprint to following a recipe. Local campaigns went door to door. The message was clear: every woman on the assembly line could bring a soldier home sooner.
A symbol is born
The story of Rosie the Riveter
“Rosie the Riveter” began as a song. Written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb in 1942 and made a hit by bandleader Kay Kyser in early 1943, it told of a girl working on the assembly line, “making history, working for victory.” On May 29, 1943, Norman Rockwell put a muscular, red-haired Rosie, rivet gun across her lap, on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Overnight Rosie became the face of every woman in war work.
The “We Can Do It!” poster
The most famous image today is the one few people saw during the war. Artist J. Howard Miller made the “We Can Do It!” poster in 1943 for Westinghouse, and it hung in the company’s plants for only about two weeks to boost morale. It was not called “Rosie” at the time. Rediscovered in the early 1980s, it became a worldwide symbol of women’s strength.
The real Rosies
Many women have been linked to Rosie. Rose Will Monroe, a riveter at Ford’s Willow Run bomber plant in Michigan, appeared in a government film about war production. Naomi Parker Fraley, photographed in 1942 at a lathe at Naval Air Station Alameda in California wearing a polka-dot bandana, is now believed to be the likely model for Miller’s poster.
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Where they worked
The jobs women did
Women did nearly every job in the war plants. They drove rivets and welded seams, ran lathes, cranes and drill presses, inspected parts, packed parachutes, drafted blueprints and tested engines. Here are the industries that depended on them most.
Life on the home front
Shifts, safety and a paycheck
War plants ran around the clock. A typical war worker put in a 48-hour week, often six days, on day, swing or “graveyard” shifts. Women wore slacks, sturdy shoes and hair tucked under a snood or bandana so it could not catch in a machine. Then they went home to shop with ration books, cook, clean and care for children, a “double day” that left many exhausted.
The pay gap
War jobs paid much more than the jobs most women could get before the war, such as waitress, store clerk or maid. Still, women usually earned far less than men. In November 1942 the National War Labor Board’s General Order 16 allowed employers to pay women the same as men for the same work, but many plants found ways around it, putting women in lower-paid job categories. Black and Latina women often faced lower pay still.
Who watched the children?
Childcare for war workers
For working mothers, the biggest problem was childcare. Many relied on grandmothers, neighbors or older children, and newspapers carried stories of “latchkey children” left alone. In 1943 Congress began using Lanham Act funds, first passed to build housing and schools in war-boom towns, to pay for public child care centers. More than 3,000 opened, and they cared for hundreds of thousands of children before the money ended in 1946.
Kaiser’s round-the-clock centers
Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser went further. In November 1943 he opened two large child service centers right at the entrances of his Portland, Oregon, shipyards. They stayed open 24 hours a day to match the shifts, had their own nurses, and even sold precooked dinners mothers could take home after work. Kaiser’s Richmond, California, yards ran child centers too. They are still held up as models of employer childcare.
Every Rosie
Black, Latina and Asian American women at war
For Black women the war was a double fight: against the Axis abroad and against discrimination at home. In June 1941, after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination in defense industries and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Enforcement was weak, and Black women were often hired last and given the dirtiest, hottest jobs. But about 600,000 Black women moved into war industry, many leaving domestic service for good. The share of Black working women employed as maids and cooks fell sharply during the war.
Mexican American women took jobs in aircraft plants and shipyards across the Southwest. Chinese American women worked in West Coast shipyards and plants. Even women held in Japanese American incarceration camps made camouflage nets for the Army.
Why it mattered
How women helped win the war
World War II was a war of machines, and the side that built the most machines had the upper hand. By 1944 the United States was producing more weapons than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, and women made up a large part of the workforce that did it. Without them, the factories could not have kept up with the armed forces’ demands while sending millions of men overseas.
“All the day long, whether rain or shine, she’s a part of the assembly line. She’s making history, working for victory.”
“Rosie the Riveter”
Song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, 1942
Year by year
Women at war work: a timeline
People
Faces of the home front
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After the war
Layoffs, the 1950s and a lasting legacy
When the war ended in 1945, war contracts were canceled almost overnight. Returning veterans had the legal right to their old jobs, and many employers simply fired women. Within a year, about two million women had left factory work, some gladly, many not. Surveys taken during the war showed most women war workers wanted to keep working.
Yet the change did not reverse. Many women moved into office, sales and service work, and the share of women in the workforce kept rising through the 1950s and beyond. The daughters of the Rosies grew up knowing their mothers had built bombers and ships. That memory helped fuel the women’s movement of the 1960s and laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
Remembering Rosie
Today the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, tells their story on the site of the Kaiser shipyards, and the “We Can Do It!” poster is one of the most recognized images in America.
See the whole war
World War II hub
Explore the battles, commanders and weapons of the war that these women helped arm, from Pearl Harbor to Normandy.
Go deeper
Books and sources
- A Mouthful of Rivets, by Vi Kirstine Wise and others, ed. Nancy Baker Wise and Christy Wise (1994)
- The Home Front: America During World War II, by Mark Harris, Franklin Mitchell and Steven Schechter (1984)
- No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin (1994)
- Freedom’s Forge, by Arthur Herman (2012)
- More recommended books