As the most famous of all labor icons, Rosie the Riveter represents the can-do attitude of women and marks their entry in previously male-dominated jobs and into the American workforce in mass. So how far have women come since 1942? Well for starters, for the first time in history, American women workers are more numerous than male workers, reports Yahoo’s Catherine Dagger.  She attributes this statistic to technology at home and at work. She reasons we don’t have to wring wash out by hand with super efficient front loader washing machines, so we have the time to work and manage the house. Yippee! And we don’t have to lift vats of molten steel to manufacture goods. We have robots for that.
A factor she doesn’t mention in the burgeoning class of women workers is the down turn in the economy. According to U.S. labor statistics, more men have lost their jobs than women during this Great Recession. Unemployment rate for adult men is 9.7 percent. For adult women it is 7.9 percent. And here’s the rub. More men have lost their jobs because men still make more money than women. (In 2008, women earned 77% as much as men.)
A historical side-note: when the first Rosies went to work in 1942, the National War Labor Board urged employers to voluntarily make “adjustments which equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operations.” Not only did employers fail to heed this “voluntary” request, but at the war’s end most women were pushed out of their new jobs to make room for returning veterans. For more about this wage gap, read Borgna Brunne’s article . So as in the past, while we’ve come a long way, we still have a ways to go.
And in true Rosie fashion, we keep moving along despite the obstacles (or lower pay). Take Gloria Georger. Â She took over
as manager of Ford Motor Co.’s stamping plant in Chicago Heights and became one of five female managers at the automaker’s 27 plants in the U.S.. Her boss is also a woman, Jan Allman. And there are countless others, many of whom have been featured on this blog. Just check out our Facebook page.
This Labor Day, our thoughts are with the original Rosies who stepped up while their men were at war. And for the Rosies today, who also step up while their men are forced to step out. While a lot has changed since 1942, women’s conviction and willingness to show our strength has not.
If you have a Rosies story, we’d love to hear it. Email us at info@roisiesworkwear.com or comment to this blog post.
