What messages did the U.S. government wish to send to women about war work, and how did it convey these messages through these posters?

M4 Assignment: Primary Source Analysis-Rosie the Riveter
Primary Source Analysis Assignment
The U.S. government needed women to fill war time jobs
during World War II, and so created a major advertisement campaign to convince
women to join the paid workforce. Nearly three million women responded, signing
up to work in defense jobs alone. Many women had worked outside of the home
before World War II—in 1940, 25 percent of women worked for wages. This was
especially true for women of color. Even when women did take war time jobs,
they were often relegated to the less skilled jobs. Nevertheless, World War II
did mark a sea change in women’s employment.
Using what you have learned about women, the working-class
and employment during World War II, analyze the war recruitment posters through
which the government encouraged women’s workforce participation.
Be
sure to put your answer in dialogue with information from the below article (Sharp/Wade) and video
video: https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687597/.

Go to the Library
of Congress’s Rosie Pictures: Select Images Relating to American Women Workers
During World War II,located
at
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/126_rosi.html
and look at the “posters” section. Look at the poster images
#32 through #34.
Describe
the women in the posters. What types of women did the Office of War
Information choose for its posters, and why? What types of women are not
depicted? (The Harvey film will give you ideas to help you deepen your
image analysis.)
What
messages did the U.S. government wish to send to women about war work, and
how did it convey these messages through these posters? Use specific
details.
What
can we learn about women’s work during World War II from these posters?
What can we not learn?
Now, look at images #1 – #31 on the same site. These are
photographs of real women, though they were also taken for the Office of War
Information.
Describe
the women in at least three of these photos. What types of women did the
Office of War Information choose as photo subjects, and why? What are the
women doing in the photos?
Many
of these photos are staged photos. Does that mean that they are still
useful to us as historical documents? What might historians learn from
some of these specific staged photos? What can we not learn? Give specific
examples from the photos.
Imagine
that you are an historian writing a history of Rosie the Riveter images.
Develop a historical question that you could attempt to answer (or a
thesis you could test) through researching these images. Here, you may
choose to use the Sharp / Wade article as a model of the kinds of
questions some scholars ask.

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