Rosie the Riveter
Women workers install fixtures and assemblies to a tail fuselage section of a B-17 bomber at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Long Beach, California. To entice women to become war workers, the War Manpower Commission created the image of “Rosie the Riveter,” later immortalized in posters and by a Norman Rockwell illustration on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. A popular 1942 song celebrating Rosie went: “Rosie’s got a boyfriend, Charlie / Charlie, he’s a marine / Rosie is protecting Charlie / Working overtime on the riveting machine.” Even as women joined the industrial workforce in huge numbers (half a million in the aircraft industry alone), they were understood as fulfilling a nurturing, protective role. Library of Congress.