How significant was womens participation in the defense jobs during the war?
WILLIAM CHAFE: Women defense workers played a critically important role in munitions factories. Women who were in these positions were doing dramatically different kinds of jobs, and they were a very critical part, component of the war industry. The interesting thing is, of course, they were presented not only for doing revolutionary new kinds of work, but in a way as people who were doing traditional kinds of work but in a new setting. So that the women who were helping to sew the wings of airplanes were being portrayed as simply bringing to a larger environment the kinds of sewing they would ordinarily be doing in their home. Those who were cutting out pieces of aluminum to put in munitions were compared to women who were cutting out cookie molds to bake their cookies. So there was this really interesting way in which the government in effect took up the imagery and the motif of domesticity in order to help make more palatable and acceptable the notion that women were doing these dif
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