Socially, economically, etc.How was life in America changed during World War II?many women left the low-paid occupations they had been working at before the war and went to work in defense jobs which were much better paid. In 'America's Women' Gail collins writes:
'The first women to volunteer for defense jobs had already been working, in low-status, low-paying positions, and they grabbed at the chance to make better salaries. Peggy Terry, who got a job with her mother and sister at a shell-loading plant in Kentucky, was euphoric %26quot;We made the fabulous sum of thirty-two dollars a week%26quot; she said %26quot;To us it was just an absolute miracle. Before that, we made nothing.%26quot; As a result of the great migration of women to defense jobs, 600 laundries went out of business in 1942, and in Detroit, a third of the restaurants closed because of the lack of help.
although most unmarried women were already working when the war started, a number of college students quit school to join the war effort. Among the other early volunteers were the wives of servicemen. %26quot;Darling, you are now the husband of a career woman - just call me your Ship yard Babe%26quot; wrote Polly Crow to her husband overseas.
The shortage of teachers impelled most school boards to drop their rules against married women,a nd some actually appealed to married ex-teachers to return. By late 1942, unemployment was virtually non-existent, and the government prjoected a need for 3 million more workers in the next year. child labor laws were suspended for youngsters over twelve. handicapped Americans were given opportunities t enter the workforce, as were black women and older women. But the prime pool of potential workers were married women. However, even when the war was at its height and the need for workers was most desperate, nearly 90 percent of the housewives who had been at home when Pearl harbor was bombed still ignored the call.
Whether women worked or not, their lives were made infinitely more complicated by rationing, which restricted the availability of sugar, coffee, certain types of meat, and canned goods as well as things like gasoline, tires, and stockings. New appliances were not being manufactured, and children who were promised a bicycle on the eve of World War II were sometimes licensed to drive by the time it became available. Unable to find stockings, women began wearing leg makeup instead. and since the stockings of the 1940s had seams down the back, women's magazines ran guides on how to draw a realistic-looking line down the calf.
American rationing was mainly a matter of inconvenience. By eating less sugar and being forced to walk because of the gasoline shortage, the population was arguably in better shape than it would ever be again. %26quot;Never in he long history of human combat have so many talked so much about sacrifice with so little deprivation as in the United Sates in World War II%26quot; sniped John Kenneth Galbraith, whoworked at the Office of price Administration.
Civilans got stamps every month that gave them the right to buy different products. %26quot;My mother and all the neighbors would get together around the table and they'd be changing a sugar coupon for a bread or meat coupon. It was like a giant Monopoly game%26quot; said Sheila Cunning, who was a child in Long Beach, California, during the war.
The war did a great deal to restore men's Depression-battered postion as the most important member of the family. the nation's entire attention was turned to the fate of husbands, brothers, sons, and boyfriends fightingt overseas. Marriage rates jumped. %26quot;The pressure to marry a soldier was so great that after a while i didn't question it%26quot; said Dellie hane of Los Angeles, who wound up unhappily married to a man in uniform. %26quot;That women married soldiers and sent them overseas happy was hammered at us.%26quot; %26quot;The girls I knew all had boyfriend were in the services and we didn't date because we were 'tagged'%26quot; said Emily Koplin of Milwaukee. %26quot;We didn't do any dating, those were the years when we would go to dances and girls would dance with girls.%26quot; The Baltimore sun noticed that %26quot;women who never vnetured out at night without a man sally forth in twos and threes without a qualm. Late movies have a a large female audience.%26quot;
For black women, the war years were a combination of opportunity and frustration. The high-paying defense jobs were the hardest to crack. in 1943, at the height of the labor shortage, the United Auto Workers surveyed 280 factories and foudn that only 74 were willing to hire an African American. When light industry went out recruiting, it turned to white women while heavy industry targeted black men. Most employers, when challenged by government or civil rights groups, said they could not hire black women because white women refused to work with them. that was often true, though companies that took a firm line and forced their employees to choose between integration and loss of lucrative jobs generally managed to overcome the problem fairly quickly.
it was not until 1944, under heavy pressure from eleanor roosevelt, that black wsomen were welcomed into the military. The WAC eventually enlisted 4,000 black recruits. Despite its grave shortage of nurses, the army was reluctant to take black RNs - particularlyif they would be treating white soldiers. the corps eventually took 500 and then enraged the black community by assinging some of them to work in prisoner-of-war camps.
In civilian life, black women moved into whatever slots white women left. They often took over low-paying jobs like elevator operators and car cleaners on railroads, but whatever the job, they saw it as an improvement over domestic work. %26quot;My sister always said that hitler was the one that got us out of the white folks' kitchens%26quot; said Tina Hill, a Los Angeles aircraft plant worker. The white hosuewives who were left scrambling for domestic help blamed the government - particularly the roosevelts, for encouraging the black women to look for higher-paying opportunities.'How was life in America changed during World War II?Befor the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans wanted the United States to be isolated and neutral. They didn't want to enter another World War because they were just getting over World War I and the Great Depression. College students had walk-outs saying that they would never go to war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans became more patriotic, propoganda was big, the average age that couples got married lowered, women began to work outside the home, families were often broken apart due to different working schedules of the parents, people were paranoid about the Japanese Americans and German Americans, and racism was still prevelant (Mexican Americans, African Americans).
