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We Can Do It!
From FamousPicturesMagazine
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| Picture Taken On: 1943 |
Place: Miller's Studio |
Behind the Camera: J. Howard Miller |
Picture Summary: A poster put out by the US government to encourage women to head out into the workforce |
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| First Posted:2007-02-17 Last Updated on 2010-7-05 by Dean Lucas |
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While other girls attend their fav'rite cocktail bar
Sippin' dry martinis, munchin' caviar
There's a girl who's really puttin' them to shame
Rosie - is her name
All the day long, whether rain or shine
She's a part of the Assembly Line
She's makin' history, workin' for Victory
Rosie! The Riveter
- -Rosie The Riveter written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, America entered the war. Companies who had been already producing some war material for the Allies switched to full wartime mobilization. As factories stepped up production, they faced an immediate problem, manpower shortages. Men working in the American labor force left by the millions to serve their country in the military. Companies who had just signed lucrative contracts with the government desperately needed workers and they turned to as yet untapped resource, American Women.
Women in the Workforce
| Do the job he left behind | 
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| —American government slogan | ||
Women in the workforce were not a new thing, especially for minorities and the poor. These working women though were mostly restricted to the traditional female professions. The attitudes of the time placed the ideal role of a woman as a homemaker raising the kids. Compounding this way of thinking was the high unemployment during the Depression. Most saw women in the workforce as taking jobs from unemployed men. The American government seeing that it would have to smash these mind-sets launched a media campaign to get women into the labor force.
With slogans like, "Do the job he left behind" or “The more women at work, the sooner we will win”, the government launched a media blitz intended to get more ladies into the factories. The “US Office of War information” even put out a “Magazine war guide” for publishers. It had ideas, slogans, and information on how to recruit women workers. Publishers were told to write articles depicting work as glamorous, with high pay but most of all emphasizing patriotism, doing all you can do. Articles soon appeared talking about how because of the war it would not reflect poorly on the man that he was not the sole moneymaker, that a family with a working wife was a patriotic family. Posters and ads of the time also stressed that the female in the factories scenario was temporary, to allay the fear that women were taking Men’s jobs. While making more money was also pressed as a plus, the government warned that the more money coming in shouldn’t be overemphasized or else women might go crazy with spending and cause inflation.
The Empowerment Posters
Part of the campaign was a series of propaganda posters encouraging all Americans to buckle down and do their part. An example of this was a poster created by Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee artist J. Howard Miller. It was simply entitled “We Can Do it”. He based the poster on a United Press International (UPI) picture taken of Geraldine Doyle working at a factory. At the time of the poster’s release, the woman pictured wasn’t named Rosie. The Rosie name came later when a popular patriotic song called “Rosie the Riveter” was released. The song was written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb and recorded by big band leader Kay Kyser. The name Rosie still wasn’t cemented as household name until the Norman Rockwell Cover on the Saturday Evening Post came out.
Rockwell’s Rossie
The May 29, 1943 edition featured Rockwell’s take on women doing their part for the war effort. Rockwell painted a statuesque factory worker named Rosie who contemplating the greater things in life while eating lunch is crushing a copy of Mein Kempf under her feet. Rockwell based the image on Michelangelo's depiction of the prophet Isaiah in the Sistine Chapel. Like many of his painting he used a model from Arlington, Vermont the small town where he spent most of his time. The 19-year-old telephone operator, Mary Doyle (later Married as Mary Keefe) posed for the picture and was quite surprised when Rockwell turned her small frame into the muscled Rosie seen on the cover.
Real life Rosies
The popular Rockwell cover and hit song prompted the government to launch a campaign promoting the fictional character of “Rosie the Riveter”. Rosie was seen as the ideal woman worker: loyal, efficient, patriotic, and pretty. Media where encouraged to go along and soon they started to find their own real life Roses. One such Rosie was Rose Hicker, who with her rivet partner was reported to have broken a record for driving rivets into a Grumman “Avenger” Bomber at the Eastern Aircraft Company in Tarrytown, New York. Hollywood star Walter Pidgeon discovered his own Rosie, when touring the FORD Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Michigan. He found a Rose Monroe riveting plane parts together, he quickly had her moved from the factory floor to the film stage, playing herself riveting in war bond films.
The similarities between the “We can do it!” poster and the Rockwell cover insured that both women where labeled as Rosie. Soon every woman in the work force was referred as Rosie. Women who worked in the factories during World War II are still called Rosies. The Miller poster and Rockwell’s cover were seen as the ideal Rosie and each had a huge demand. Yet, Rockwell’s cover was copyrighted which slowed reproduction. Miller’s poster had no restrictions and it was soon on everything, as everybody wanted to show their support for Rosie. The Rockwell cover while it had helped create the Rosie legend slowly faded from view and Miller’s “We can do it” poster, rechristened Rosie the Riveter became the image everyone remembers.
Millions of women took up the call to fill the factory the floor’s vacated by the men during World War II. It became so hard to find women to do traditional jobs that many companies had to shut down for example some 600 hundred laundries were forced to close due to lack of workers. While women enjoyed the independence and money their jobs brought, after the war as the men started to return home most left or were forced from their jobs. They went either back into the home or into traditional female employment roles but not all left, as after World War II women in the workforce would never dip below pre-war levels.
Geraldine Doyle aka Rossie
Geraldine Doyle, born July 31, 1924, who inspired Miller’s poster is still alive and often tours the country signing Rosie the Riveter posters. She actually didn’t find out she was Rosie until 1984 when she found the picture in a 1942 Modern Maturity Magazine. In 1992 the U.S. Postal service created a stamp with the Rosie’s Image.
Mar 20 2010 2:30 am
i'm wandering, does the image posters, worth in the sum of money? -- The Lourve Museum
Mar 20 2010 3:33 am
Not sure what you're asking but if you want to buy the poster it's ten American dollars here