The Rosie the Riveter poster we have come to associate with women empowerment was scarcely seen during WWII. In fact, the poster “We Can Do It!” designed by artist J. Howard Miller for Westinghouse had a lifetime of two weeks on display in Westinghouse factories only. It was Norman Rockwell’s design of Rosie lounging in a chair, tools in hand, and foot on the Third Reich on the Saturday Evening Post cover in 1943 that encapsulated the nation’s attention.
The idea of Rosie was a call for the nation’s need to engage women in men’s professions, particularly in the aviation industry, when men left industries in short supply of workers to fight in the war. By 1942, Kay Kyser and his big band were playing the “Rosie the Riveter” song written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb for Paramount. The lyrics praised Rosie on the assembly line “making history working for victory.” A musical comedy movie by the same name starring Jane Frazer heralded Rosie in 1944.
In all scenarios, however, Rosie on the assembly line was a temporary fixture. America, never comfortable with women in the work place, intended for women to return to the traditional role of housewife when “Johnny came marching home,” and millions of them did.
The proper role for women in the life of their men has been argued for thousands of years. Porcia, the wife of Marcus Brutus (the most famous assassin of Julius Caesar), pleaded for a shared relationship. According to Plutarch, Porcia opined, “I, being the daughter of Cato, was given in marriage, not like a concubine...but to bear a part in all your good and all your evil fortunes…I know very well that women seem to be too weak a nature to be treated with secrets but...if you distrust me, it is better for me to die than live.”
Porcia died young, by suicide after hearing of Brutus death, a death that fascinated historians and writers including Shakespeare that has kept her alive for 2000 years. Porcia, described as a woman of courage and understanding, was deeply engaged in the Stoic philosophy of the time.
Stoicism adhered to personal ethics informed by logic and nature and working together trusting others fairly and justly. Stoics believed “virtue is the only good.” Porcia challenged her husband and the role of women in marriage, calling for ethical and moral behavior consistent with the philosophy of Stoicism. It was a philosophy embraced by her father Cato, but died out of favor within the next century. Even so, Porcia’s challenge is still alive in the nations of today’s world.
After WWII, not all of the six million women engaged on the assembly lines returned to the home fires. Some no longer had a husband. Wartime efforts by women to share babysitting and cooking opened up new business opportunities for displaced homemakers. In 1970, as the nation’s economy changed, the U.S. Labor Department promoted a project to open up doors for women in non-traditional jobs—a role reversal that touched many women.
Baltimore, under the leadership of Mandy Goetz, a thought-leader and inspiration for the International Alliance for Women, secured a federal grant and opened New Directions for Women in 1973. Under Goetz, Baltimore also founded a center for displaced homemakers and testified before Congress of the need for women in the workforce.
By the 1980s, women’s groups, advocating for employment, equal rights, and against wage and job discrimination, searched for an image for women empowerment. After 40 years of obscurity, Miller’s Rosie the Riveter poster was discovered and removed from the dust bin. The photo of Naomi Parker, taken in 1943 at the Alameda Naval Air Station, of an attractive strong woman on the assembly line that inspired Miller’s “We Can Do It!” image, became the rallying cry we are familiar with, and which proved women could do a man’s job.
Eleanor Otto, who received a woman of the year award in 2014, proved the point continuing her WWII work, building airplanes for 50 years until she retired at age 95. In 2019, May Krier, also age 95, who worked for Boeing during the War years, testified before Congress to establish March 21st as National Rosie Riveter Day.
Whether Porcia or Rosie, the role of women at home and in the workplace has been contemplated for thousands of years, is perhaps ever in flux, and is still a world-wide conundrum.
