Rose Will Monroe
You've probably never heard of Rose Will Monroe. She was born in Kentucky in 1922. During World War II she moved to Michigan. She worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, building B-29 and B-24 bombers for the Air Force.
She was asked to star in a promotional film about the war effort at home. She was also featured in a poster campaign. She became known as Rosie the Riveter, perhaps the most widely recognized icon of that era. The films and posters she appeared in were used by the U.S. government to encourage women to go to work in support of the war effort.
Ms. Monroe died at the age of 77 on May 31, 1997 in Clarksville, Indiana.
Following the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941, some six million women entered the workforce, many assuming what were traditional male roles in the defense industry and manufactoring. Without the effort of these women, the history of Europe would be very different today. At the same time, in Great Britan, millions of women were assuming farm production duties as men went off to fight. During the war years, farm production reached record heights in that country.
After the war, American women were encouraged to return to their kitchens to make room in the factories for the men who were returning from Europe and the South Pacific. The U.S. government even went so far as to conspire with the budding television industry to show glorified images of women performing domestic duties in the newly developed programs on television to encourage this as the cultural norm.
Ms. Monroe, unlike many women, didn't return to the kitchen after the war. She held jobs as a taxi driver, a beauty salon operator and formed her own construction company in Indiana called Rose Builders. The company specialized in high-quality custom homes.
Some of the information here was taken from the Associated Press obituary for Ms. Monroe. Interestingly enough, the obituary said that during the war "thousands of women" joined the work force. In fact, as I have written here, that number was on the order of six million. Perhaps if you take enough "thousands" (six thousand, to be exact) you end up with six million. But somehow, using the phrase "thousands" when really "millions" is more correct, seems to downplay the issue at hand. Would we say that "thousands of jews were put to death in Nazi concentration camps" when really the number was six million.
