The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter

I am applying intersectionality and the sociological imagination to my intersecting identities: class, gender, and ethnicity. By employing intersectionality and the sociological imagination, I am analyzing how my positionality affected my personal experiences while connecting those events with society. I also included five peer-reviewed articles as supporting evidence.

In movies, pictures, posters, newspapers, articles, and a painting by Norman Rockwell on the Saturday Evening Post Cover, Rosie the Riveter, encouraged women to start working. The campaign was a huge success as women entered the workforce in big numbers. Although, women were an important part of the war, they were not paid the same as their male partners. Women barely earned more than 50% of men’s pay. Though Rosie The Riveter was the poster girl, there were 11 Women Warrior icons in the World War II , even though there were many more these 11 women stood

Early feminism was typically focused only on white women, likely because racism was still extremely prominent at the time feminism began emerging. It was not until Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the term “intersectionality” in 1989 that feminism started to look at oppressed group’s needs (Nash, 2008, 2). Intersectionality is a way of thinking that acknowledges that when a person has identities that belong to more than one oppressed group, it impacts their quality of life more negatively. In this paper, I will argue that intersectionality is important in the discussion of feminist theories and activism because it ensures that feminism is for all women, not just a select group of them. Intersectionality has changed the way the feminist movement handles the overlapping of different identities, which has helped feminist theorists understand the experiences of women of colour much more clearly. While intersectionality has a very important role in the conversation and practice of feminism, there are certainly critiques of the concept that should be brought up. These critiques, however, can offer a way to improve the study of intersectionality.

It is mandatory to understand the history behind Intersectionality and it’s upbringing to understand how it ties into cultural identity. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s classic article “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” helps to understand the struggle that women of color face with entwined differences that are not confronted and dealt with accordingly. Crenshaw mentions that, “The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite -- that is frequently conflates or ignores infra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is

In the memoir “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, Dorothy Allison recites stories from her life that ultimately depict the oppression and liberation seen in gender, sexuality, and social class. Intersectionality is a theme that can be seen throughout the book. Intersectionality is the overlapping of characteristics (such as sex, gender, race, class, and sexuality) that forms a person’s identity. Although people may have similar traits and characteristics, they are distinct from person to person. They can depict different features about different people throughout society.

Howard Miller was hired by Westing House Company’s, War production committee to create a poster for the war efforts. He used pathos to express a women with confidence and beauty to show people a woman can be beautiful and work in factories, he also used the slogan, “we can do it” this is using ethos to show that they had the capabilities to go above and beyond what any person believed they could do, they proved that they had the skill and determination to accomplish the jobs in the factories. Although maybe not a true celebrity like people we may consider famous, the author uses Geraldine Doyle in the propaganda poster “we can do it”, she was a factory worker in Lansing, Michigan. She died on December 26, 2010 at age 86. She was remembered as an unwitting feminist hero as a model for the ionic poster of WWII. On this poster Geraldine became known as Rosie the riveter, as did many of the women in that time, there was also a Rosie the Riveter song out in 1942. Soon after, the once fictional ‘Rosie the riveter’ came to life, her name was Rose Will Monroe, widow with 2 girls, and she moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan to work in the aircraft factory, she was noticed during a bond drive at the factory and was asked to do bond commercials, although she never capitalized on that, she was always known as a feminist icon. After the war she didn’t go back to being a house wife, she had a variety of jobs such as taxi driver, hair salon operator, and she even opened her

The role of women in American history has evolved a great deal over the past few centuries. In less than a hundred years, the role of women has moved from housewife to highly paid corporate executive to political leader. As events in history have shaped the present world, one can find hidden in such moments, pivotal points that catapult destiny into an unforeseen direction. This paper will examine one such pivotal moment, fashioned from the fictitious character known as ‘Rosie the Riveter’ who represented the powerful working class women during World War II and how her personification has helped shape the future lives of women.

Even though Rosie the Riveter is an image frequently synonymous with the contemporary women’s movement, she was not designed to promote social change or improve the role of women in the workplace during World War II. In reality, she was promoted as the ideal female worker and was patriotic, confident, capable, and beautiful in a large propaganda campaign by the United States government. Since the war caused many men to answer the call to serve in the military, both at home and abroad, the United States was faced with the urgent challenge of recruiting women into the workforce. Rosie the Riveter was their solution to this problem.

Before the war, women in America had typical lives, and many were wives and mothers. America was brought into the war unexpectedly when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. Hundreds of thousands of men were drafted into the war, leaving the women behind. America lost a lot of valuable, hard-working men to fight, and they needed people to fill their positions. According to history.com’s article, “American Women in World War II”, it was then when Rosie the Riveter was created to recruit women to become part of the “work force” (“American Women in World War II”). Rosie the Riveter was a fictional character who motivated women across the U.S. to take jobs in different industries, many of which were previously all-male positions.

A girl who was 17 years old, became the motivation the 1940’s for women. She would later become known as Rosie the Riveter. This girls’ name is Geraldine Hoff Doyle. She was a hardworking woman and she had a job at a metal manufacturing plant in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poster was exhibited all over the U.S. The poster was of Geraldine Hoff Doyle pulling her sleeve back to show that she is strong while wearing a red polka dot bandana headband. Her shout of “We Can Do It!” is over her in bold letters.

An intersectional approach is an approach which seeks to demonstrate how race, class, gender and sexuality make certain experiences different. Intersectionality is the overlapping of social categories such as race, class, gender and sexuality that leads to further discrimination against a certain individual or group. To take an intersectional approach to understand race, class, gender and sexuality, is to consider hardships not as a similar element for all individuals without regards to race, but instead consider where in a specific hardship different races, genders, classes and sexualities are affected different. According to Crenshaw, “many of the experiences Black women face are not subsumed within the traditional boundaries of race or gender discrimination as these boundaries are currently understood, and that the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the woman race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately” (Crenshaw, 357). Crenshaw explains that the personal experiences of women of color cannot be fully understood by looking at race or gender discrimination as two separate factors, but in fact can be understood if both aspects are looked at together. When race and gender are examined separately, this causes for women of color to be “erased”. Crenshaw says, “ And so, when the practices expound identity as “woman” or “person of color” as an either/or proposition, they relegate

The theory of intersectionality has received a widespread of various distinct definitions and usage; it is often unclear of its designed function may be. Intersectionality is defined as “the acknowledgment that different forms of identity-based discrimination can combine to give rise to unique brands of injustice”(Lucas 8). In other words, how the classification of one’s individuality such as gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class can intertwine with each other among the social structure. The term was first coined by feminist and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw who spoke upon the discrimination and marginalization of black women and how both institutions interconnect with one another. The significance of

“Intersectionality” is defined as the interrelated nature of societal classifications such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, viewed as generating intersecting and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. In order to study these social formations one must understand “how they mutually construct one another” (Collins, 62).

During World War II, many people moved in to new jobs for the war effort. This included women by the millions. “Rosie the Riveter” was a national symbol of women taking jobs in the industrial field while the men were away fighting the war. “She was fictional, but represented the ideal government worker, including being loyal, efficient, and patriotic”, (Bowles, 2011).

Individuals are positioned differently in society in relation to socially constructed categories of identity (race, gender, class, socioeconomic status, etc.) that shape our experiences. The social construct categories that one belong to can produce social, political and economic privilege and oppression. The theory of intersectionality suggests that our relationship to these categories is multi-layered and co-constructed. Thus, our relationship to privilege and oppression is a complicated dynamic that can change throughout our lifetimes (Suarez, Newman & Reed, 2008).