Rosie the Riveter and Mary the Munitions Worker

Lesson Introduction

Women in the United States were called upon during World War II to participate in supporting the war effort overseas. Their efforts were necessary in the areas of sewing, gathering scrap metal and conserving resources for use in the war, and building morale among the troops, among other things. As the draft swept up the last of the men who had been working in the factories, women were called upon to operate plants to supply the soldiers with gunpowder, artillery, rocket fuel, and a host of other munitions. Seventy-seven plants were constructed with lightning speed in the U.S., and women were a majority of the workforce in many of them.

This turn of events changed the way the United States saw women and the way women viewed themselves. They operated these plants expertly, which the plant officials did not think they could do. Women proved that they could do the jobs that were previously relegated to men only.

Illinois State Goal	Standard	Learning Benchmarks
16	D	5. Analyze the relationship between an issue in United States social history and the related aspects of political, economic, and environmental history.

Lesson Objectives

• gain an understanding of the role that places like the Joliet Arsenal played in changing women's status in American society.

Advance Preparation

Obtain enough tape recorders to accommodate the class. You may need to ask them to provide their own, borrow from each other, or sign out the available ones from the school.

Time Allotment

Two one-hour class periods

Materials

• Library and Internet access (optional)
• Tape recorders or video recorders (optional)

PROCEDURE

Tap Prior Knowledge

1. Ask the class, "How do you feel after you have done a difficult task well? Does it make you more confident about your ability to tackle other tasks?" Such confidence was one of the effects of WWII on women in the United States. Women found themselves doing production jobs that had been previously assigned to men, and doing those jobs quite successfully. They also were, most for the first time, bringing home their own paychecks. These factors changed the way women saw themselves in the world.

Share with Neighbor

2. Ask the students how many people from the United States fought in the War. What jobs did those men leave behind when they left? Encourage them to draw on their knowledge from previous study, but allow them to speculate if they have not had formal background education in this area.

3.Now ask them what types of jobs were required in order to maintain the United States' war effort. What supplies did soldiers need to use during the war? Students should be lead to realize that many factories were used to build munitions to supply the soldiers. At the onset of the War, the United States opened seventy-seven munitions plants. One of those was the Joliet Arsenal, the site now of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, near Chicago. Since a large part of the male labor force got called to serve in combat, the job of producing munitions eventually fell to women in the U.S. This happened gradually, as women were given such jobs only when there were no men available to take them. The arsenal officials were pleasantly surprised at the competence that the women exhibited in their tasks and the women were gradually accepted as legitimate employees.

Hands-on Activity

4. Ask students if anyone in their family was alive during World War II. What were they doing during the war? Tell the students that they are going to interview one of these "production soldiers" or some other woman who participated in non-combat military service during WWII. Students should prepare for this interview by doing some preliminary research. They should find out what army ammunition plants and/or other types of war support industries were operating where their interviewee(s) lived. If possible have students gather employment data showing the numbers and percentages of women in the labor force, unemployed women, and other applicable statistics before, during, and after the War.

5. Students should try their own family members or close acquaintances first. It will be easiest for them to tape-record their interviews. Encourage students to go into the interview with a preliminary list of questions. You may wish to practice interviewing skills with the students. If students are having a difficult time finding someone to interview, you may wish to have one visitor meet the class and be interviewed by the class as a whole. Some potential questions for those interviewed might be:

What type of work did you do during the War?
When did you begin this work?
What changes did this work bring to your lifestyle?
What wage did you earn? How did this wage compare with the men who worked around you? How did it compare to the wages that other women could earn in other jobs at the time?
Was your work dangerous? Was it exciting?
Why did you go take this job?
When did you stop working at this job? Was it voluntary or were you laid off or put on furlough?
What did this work do to your perceptions of your life, your family, and your country?
How was your life different after the War than it was before the War?

6. Have students transcribe their interviews from the tapes and write a one- or two-page reaction to what they learned.

Relate Activity and Concept

7. Happenings in history have effects in areas that were not thought to be related, as is the case with World War II. The war created the need for soldiers, which created the need for munitions, which created the need for munitions plants. This altered our nation's perceptions of different roles in the family, our perception of the family, and our perception of home.

Learning Outcomes

• be able to describe the changes in the labor force surrounding the War.
• state the causes of those changes and their results on women and families in the United States become aware of the war production facilities in their region.
• be able to describe the status of production facilities in the present day.

Extension Activity