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In his final week in office, President Biden signed important legislation that would allow a monument dedicated to American women to be placed on the National Mall. It would honor women's suffragists who, after seventy years of trying, would finally be recognized for what they achieved in 1920 - the right to vote.
The Women's Suffrage National Monument was approved on the eve of Donald Trump's second term. Preceded by the Vietnam nurses 1993 monument it will be the Mall's first large scale monument dedicated to American women's history. The site has yet to be determined and there is no design yet or competition announcement for sculptors.
Given the current situation in Washington, where neither women nor art are respected, it will take time before the Suffragists are on the Mall and even more time for Rosie the Riveter or the 6888 to show up, but it's about time women representing their wartime labor is recognized in a place of memory and respect
We have Joe Neguse (D-CO) to thank for the Suffrage monument. He introduced legislation for it to be created in 2020 and his bill passed in the House. Unfortunately, it has remained stalled in the Senate until now.
Still, it's not too soon to start advocating for another group of women to be honored on the Mall. "Rosie the Riveter," representing women who labored in America's factories during World War II, deserve to be there too along with the all-women 6888 regiment. The Rosies filled critical wartime factories and the 6888 restored morale among exhausted soldiers who had waited for mail from home.
Some Rosies received a bit of recognition at the Capital last spring when they received Congressional Gold Medals for their efforts. But that's not a lasting memorial that everyone can see. As one of them, Mae Krier, said at the Capital, "Up until 1941 it was a man's world. They didn't know how capable us women were did they?"
Thanks to an endearing poster that has a woman in a bandana flexing her muscle we know about these women, but we have very little information about who they were and what they did unless you've seen the documentary about them. The reality is they were wives, mothers, daughters, and girlfriends whose men were fighting in the war. With little reservation they quickly became heads of households while learning demanding skills and holding down vital jobs in America's factories to help the war effort.
By 1943 "Rosie the Riveters" were known and respected, but few people realized that one out of five defense workers were women, or that the largest employers of women during WWII were airplane manufacturers, and companies like Chrysler, Goodyear, and Ford. Nor did they know just after the war that more women worked in the labor force than during the war.
More than 310,000 women worked in the U.S. aircraft industry in 1943, making up 65 percent of the industry's total workforce (compared to just 1 percent in the pre-war years). The munitions industry also heavily recruited women workers, as illustrated by the U.S. government's Rosie the Riveter propaganda campaign.
Sadly, when Johnny came marching home again, the Rosies, who'd been admired for their skills and work ethics when they were needed, found themselves being subject to propaganda via a slew of medial messages that tried to convince them that their real place was in the home as wives and mothers. They suffered mass layoffs as vets took their jobs, but some of them proudly expressed the pride they had taken in their work.
One of them was Arlene Crary who lived in Wisconsin but went to work for almost two years at a Boeing factory in Seattle where she was paid $1.48 an hour. Eva Chenevert lived in Detroit. A year after graduating high school she was hired by Chrysler to make skins for airplanes. She was faced with misogyny and racism as a Black woman. Still, these women and others like them soldiered on.
As the National Park Service points out, "Rosie's impact extended well beyond the war years. Her image became a rallying cry for the women's rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, inspiring legislation like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today, Rosie continues to inspire advocacy for gender equality and representation in fields like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM.")
Illustrator Norman Rockwell deserves our thanks for an early image of Rosie the Riveter that appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in the 1940s. Soon other images followed, including the iconic one we all know that appears on various items and shows up at women's marches.
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