The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 11 (2000)

Gender and Work in the American Aircraft
Industry during World War II

Chitose SATOINTRODUCTION
On January 28, 1942, The San Diego Tribune-Sun reported that sixty
Pearl Harbor widows with the motto, “Keep ‘em ﬂying to avenge ourhusbands’ deaths,” had applied for jobs in Lockheed and Vega Aircraft
Companies in Burbank, California. After taking an aptitude test, whose
results, according to the companies in question, were much better than
average, the widows duly became the ﬁrst women to obtain jobs under
the new company policy of giving preference to those in need of employment as a result of wartime emergency1. These Pearl Harbor widows
were particularly eager to get hired by an aircraft manufacturer because
they, like most other Americans, believed that making military airplanes
would be the most effective contribution to the war effort. Motivatedeither by patriotism or by pursuit of higher wages and better opportunities, 486,023 women acquired aircraft jobs during the Second World
War, accounting for 36.6 percent of the entire aircraft industry labor
force. In particular, women were a conspicuous presence in the aircraft
plants and their subcontractors in southern California, which formed thecore of U.S. military aircraft production. By the fall of 1943, approximately 150,000 female workers obtained aircraft jobs in the region and
Copyright © 2000 Chitose Sato. All rights reserved. This work may be used, withthis notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may
be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.
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the proportion of women among all employees at some airframe factories in the cities and vicinities of Los Angeles and San Diego reachedsixty percent.2
This paper examines the efforts of the wartime aircraft industry insouthern California to tap into the large reservoir of unskilled female
labor in response to intensiﬁed national defense plans for increasing themilitary aircraft production between 1939 and 1945. Despite the fact that
dramatic changes in the composition of the labor force transformed thenature of aircraft production and the industry itself in the early 1940s,
few historical works have dealt with this issue. Most of them are ofﬁcial
company histories of major aircraft manufacturers which brieﬂy discuss
how new employees were integrated into the workforce during the war.
Although the image of women aircraft workers has become familiar tous through “Rosie the Riveter,” what little is written about women aircraft workers is based upon interviews with former employees and highlights their personal experiences. This approach fails, however, toconsider how the inﬂux of women workers affected the whole production system and employers’ perceptions of female workers.3
The ﬁrst part of this paper identiﬁes the issues around which concretechanges in the aircraft industry occurred, such as the expansion of “feeder plants” which actively recruited housewives from the suburbs,
employers’ racist preference for white female over black male workers,
and the speed of technological innovations, especially the introductionof the line production system in aircraft manufacturing. The second partof this paper demonstrates that the discourse on women’s ability and aptitude for aircraft production swiftly changed as technological innovations
created “women’s” aircraft jobs, most of which were simple and repetitive, requiring little skill. Employers found that women could make themost of their female “characteristics” in such segmented and simpliﬁed
labor processes. The hiring of a large number of women forced the aircraft companies to adopt labor-management policies especially designed
for women. The third section of this essay explores how the wartime
inﬂux of women workers into aircraft plants led to the formation of new
types of labor-management policies in ﬁelds such as women’s wage andupgrading, job training, absenteeism and turnover, counselor programs,
and child care service.

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WOMEN WORKERS IN THE AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY

After the United States lifted the arms embargo on the Allies with theenactment of the Fourth Neutrality Act of 1939, the demand for military
airplanes increased on an unprecedented scale. On May 16, 1940,
President Roosevelt announced an emergency plan to turn out at least
50,000 planes a year.4 As the annual production of military and civilian
airplanes was only 5,856 units in 1940, this meant almost a tenfold
increase in the current production capacity of the aircraft industry. This
plan came under further review after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In his State of the Union Message on January 7, 1942, Roosevelt
informed Congress that he had issued a directive to the agencies concerned, ordering them to increase annual airplane production to 60,000
planes, including 45,000 combat planes. He also stressed the urgent needfor a rapid increase in the production of four-engine bombers that would
play a crucial role in the Paciﬁc theater.5
Before World War II, aircraft plants were “job shops” in which mostjobs were done by skilled workers who had spent at least two to three
years as apprentices before they became full-ﬂedged craftsmen. In 1939,
skilled and semi-skilled workers accounted for ninety percent of the totallabor force in the aircraft industry, the highest proportion in any
American industry. Due to small output and frequent model and designchanges, prewar aircraft production, which consisted of more than 200
operations, relied upon the skill of these experienced workers who handled a variety of production assignments. As late as January 1940, theaircraft industry employed fewer than 100,000 workers with young men
in their twenties and thirties constituting the core of the workforce.6
Because most aircraft workers were men of draft age, the Selective
Service initially delayed military conscription of skilled aircraft workers to avoid disrupting production. Most companies also negotiateddirectly with local draft boards to obtain exemption of their essential
male workers.7 However, there were limits to these individual efforts.
As more and more local aircraft plants suffered from severe labor shortages, the War Production Board designated Los Angeles as a laborscarce area of the ﬁrst magnitude. When aircraft companies built newplants, their main consideration was ﬁnding places where a sufﬁcientlabor force was still available.8
After Pearl Harbor, the hiring of unskilled workers proceeded at an
unprecedented rate and the number of workers reached 2,106,000 at its

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peak in November 1943. In particular, aircraft plants on the West Coast
increased their workforce ﬁfteenfold from 36,848 in 1940 to 474,198 in
1945.9 Women became a major source of new workers and the numberof female aircraft workers rapidly increased to its peak, 486,073, inNovember 1943. This accounted for 36.6 percent of the entire labor force
in the industry. Airframe plants employed about seventy-six percent of
women, while twenty-one percent worked at engine plants and only three
percent at propeller plants.10 In southern California, there were ﬁve airframe plants that hired more than 10,000 women workers by June 1943:
Douglas at Long Beach (16,2998), Douglas at Santa Monica (13,526),
Lockheed at Burbank (13,437), Consolidated-Vultee at San Diego(13,164) and Vega at Burbank (12,406).11
Female aircraft workers were relatively young compared with womenin other industries. According to a contemporary survey, their average
age was twenty-six to twenty-eight years, thirty percent of them were
single, thirty-ﬁve percent married, and the rest divorced or widowed.
Married women were welcomed at most factories. Especially, many aircraft companies gave priority to the wives of military personnel in theirhiring schedule. In addition, the wives and daughters of their male
employees were given preference because they could commute together and quickly adjusted to factory life with the help of their husbands andfathers. The management also preferred them because they believed thatthese women would willingly give up their jobs once the war was oversince they were not breadwinners originally.12
One reason why major aircraft plants in southern California were able
to utilize a large proportion of female labor to achieve a rapid increasein production was their creation of “feeder plants” in metropolitan districts, usually a few miles away from the main factories. Feeder plants
were used as satellite factories that concentrated on the production ofparts and subassemblies for their main plants. For instance, Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation, in addition to its Burbank plant and small factories scattered in the Los Angeles area, built new feeder plants in the Santa
Barbara, Bakersﬁeld, and Fresno areas. Consolidated-Vultee of San
Diego also established feeder plants in the San Bernardino, Santa Anna,
Downey, and Los Angeles areas.13 Located in the suburbs, feeder plants
attracted housewives who were interested in getting war jobs but did notwant to be bothered by commuting many miles to aircraft plants in thecities. Migrant workers, most of whom moved from the Midwest to
California in search of higher wages and better jobs in defense indus-

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151

tries, also preferred to work at feeder plants because they could avoid
the expense of commuter transportation and housing in the cities.14
The second reason for a large inﬂux of women into the aircraft industry is that aircraft plants traditionally employed few black workers. In
spite of the establishment of the Fair Employment Practice Committeeby the administrative order in June 1941, and repeated protests against
racial discrimination in employment by black organizations, aircraftcompanies continued to regard black labor as a last resort. They wanted
to maintain a favorable image of aircraft work as light, clean, technologically advanced, and highly paid. Aircraft jobs were generally popular with white job hunters, and even after the pool of white male workers
was exhausted, blacks were still shut out of aircraft production.
The industry turned instead to white women. Although by the summer of 1944 the number of black workers gradually increased to around
100,000, only six percent of all aircraft workers, the rate of increase wasstill relatively small compared with other defense industries.15 For
instance, the percentage of black workers in the shipbuilding industry
was much higher than in the aircraft industry in southern California. In
Los Angeles in June 1942, black workers accounted for 7.2 percent inshipbuilding, whereas the proportion was only 1.5 percent in aircraft.
This difference can be attributed to the nature of these two industries:
shipyard jobs were generally regarded as dirty and demanding, and black
workers who were not given better job opportunities in other defense
industries worked in shipyards disregarding the unfavorable working
conditions.16
However, it is intriguing to note that black women generally could
obtain aircraft jobs more easily than black men. It was largely because
both employers and white male workers regarded women of any race as
temporary workers who would leave their jobs once the war was over.
Employers considered black women less of a threat to the prevailingracial hierarchy in the workplace than black men. However, in actuality, only a small number of black women were assigned to production
jobs in aircraft factories, mainly because many white women had anaversion to working with black women. White women particularly disliked sharing washing facilities and rest rooms with them. As a result,even when black women were hired by aircraft plants, most worked insegregated teams or as janitors and sweepers.17
The third reason that a large number of women were able to ﬁnd
employment in aircraft plants during the war was the transformation of

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the production system in the aircraft industry. The greatest innovation
was the introduction of line production, which was characterized by acontrolled ﬂow of segmented and simpliﬁed operations that were laidout in a progressive sequence. This assembly line production was modeled after that of the automobile industry, although the number of airplane parts was far greater than that of automobiles. Labor processes, inwhich skilled workers used to manage a variety of operations, weredivided as much as possible to simplify each task. A newly hired worker was assigned to a simple repetitive operation that required little skill.
By the fall of 1943, about eighty percent of all aircraft workers wereassigned to the production line after having learned how to perform a
few simple operations with minimal job training. Output per man-hour
greatly increased at aircraft plants.18
Aircraft companies could afford capital investment to introduce theline production system thanks to generous government loans. In addition, through the Aircraft War Production Council, major aircraft companies also made efforts to standardize the parts for major models ofﬁghters and bombers so that parts would be interchangeable. On the West
Coast, the council consisted of Consolidated, Douglas, Lockheed, Vega,
North American, Ryan, Vultee, Northrop, and eventually Boeing. A considerable amount of know-how about production, which, as trade secrets,
had rarely been disclosed before the war, was now widely shared amongits members. The aircraft companies also cooperated in the mass production of certain models when adopted by the military even if they weredeveloped and patented by other companies.19
II THE CREATION OF WOMEN’S AIRCRAFT WORK
Although women constituted about one-third of all clerical workers inaircraft companies even before Pearl Harbor, only a small number ofwomen were employed as production workers at plants. A survey ofseven airframe plants conducted by the Women’s Bureau shows that in
the spring of 1941 women accounted for as little as one percent of thetotal aircraft production workforce. In the fall of that year, theDepartment of War started a campaign for the active recruitment of
women for labor deﬁcient plants, but the situation did not change much.
On the eve of the Paciﬁc War, according to an estimate, less than 4,000
women were engaged in the manufacturing of airplanes throughout thecountry.20

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153

Most of these prewar female aircraft workers were concentrated incertain manufacturing jobs that had been historically regarded as suitable for women. Some were within the covering and fabric department
where they cut out fabric parts and stitched various covers for airplanebodies and wings, parachutes, and pilot seats. They operated sewing
machines and stretched covers on ailerons, elevators, and rudders. The
work in this section was similar to needlework, which had traditionallybeen viewed as “women’s” work. An analogy between dressmaking andcovering work was frequently made, which made the inﬂux of women
to this department relatively easy.21
Electric assembly was another traditional women’s job in the aircraft
industry. Assembling electric parts was labor-intensive and most jobs
were light and repetitive. Many electric companies had been hiring large
numbers of women since World War I because of their manual dexterity. The electric assembly departments of aircraft plants followed theexperiences of electric manufacturers, utilizing female labor in the simple assembly work of electric equipment for airplanes. The proportionof female workers in this department varied from one aircraft company
to another. At Vultee, which was one of the ﬁrst aircraft manufacturersthat employed female production workers, women did most of the electric assembly jobs by January 1942.22
Outside of the two departments just described, almost all aircraft jobs
were closed to women before 1941. As in other industries, most aircraft
manufacturers did not seriously consider hiring large numbers of women
either to replace men or to staff new plants. They simply believed thataircraft jobs were “men’s” work which required special skills and experience. They assumed that since women were physically different frommen and had considerable physical weakness, they were not suitable formost of the jobs. In fact, however, despite such misgivings, 486,073
women were working for the aircraft industry by the end of 1943.
Conventional explanation attributes this to the massive drain of young
men to the armed services as well as the physical expansion of the industry that forced all aircraft manufacturers to explore new sources oflabor.23
However, certain characteristics of aircraft jobs greatly contributed to
the relatively smooth introduction of tens of thousands of women overa short period of time. When the war came, aircraft companies specialized in the production of technologically advanced military ﬁghters andbombers composed of thousands of small and light parts. As a result, rel-

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CHITOSE SATO

atively few jobs required much physical strength. After 1942, as employers gradually hired women provisionally, they “discovered” that women
were actually competent in many aircraft jobs. In particular, women’s
manual dexterity and attentiveness were considered very advantageousin the precise assembly of aircraft parts. Employers also found thatwomen were more patient than men and rarely minded simple repetitive
operations in which men usually got quickly bored and grew careless.
Furthermore, employers paid special attention to women’s allegedly
more acute sense of sight, hearing, and touch. They believed that withwomen’s concentration and meticulousness, female workers would begood at sorting and inspecting small parts and components. The sensitivity of their hands and delicate touch were regarded as useful assets inthe operation of precise machines and small tools.24
Physically demanding jobs as the ﬁnal assembly of bodies and theinstallment of engines still continued to be regarded exclusively as men’spreserve because they required strength for pushing, pulling, and lifting
heavy weights. But, responding to the pressures of wartime production,
aircraft factories pioneered the introduction of devices for reducing theamount of work requiring brute strength. Installing mechanical aids suchas conveyors, automatic hoists, elevators, and mobile cranes was themost practical way of assisting female workers in dealing with heavy
components. A work manager at Wright Aeronautical Corporation
reported that these mechanical aids contributed not only to assigning
women to “men’s” jobs but also to reducing the number of industrial
accidents.25
A less costly alternative was to assign unskilled male workers to assista team of women. These men specialized in such physical labor as lifting and carrying heavy loads. Most employers also made efforts to makeadjustments in instruments, tools, and machines to accommodate women’s physiques. For instance, employers changed the standard wheels
and grips of machines to smaller and lighter ones so that even womenwhose pull and grasping power were much weaker than men’s could easily handle them. Workbenches were also lowered to ﬁt women’s average height and ease the exertion of performing tasks. In actuality, these
modiﬁcations were signiﬁcant not only for incoming women but also for
newly employed male workers who included young men under draft age,
middle-aged men above draft age, and elderly men in retirement.26
Apart from their alleged physical weakness, a persistent concern about
women’s potential as aircraft workers was their technical aptitude for theGENDER AND WORK IN THE AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY DURING WWII

155

production of ﬁghters and bombers, which was one of the most technologically advanced ﬁelds of manufacturing. The dominant view was thatwomen had neither the ability nor aptitude for machines and technology. Most employers basically assumed that technological and mechanical jobs were inherently men’s, rejecting the notion that everyone
regardless of their gender was able to acquire skills and learn technology through proper training and experience. We now know that the factthat many women were neither interested in nor good at things mechanical was largely due to a social environment which gave women less
opportunity to learn about machines since their childhood. But mostemployers did not see it that way in the 1940s.27
Interestingly, as more women entered the workplace in aircraft factories, quite a few foremen found that women’s lack of work experienceand mechanical knowledge was an asset rather than a liability. For
instance, a work manager at a GM engine plant noted that women werevery attentive pupils who diligently carried out instructions down to theminutest detail. Based upon his observation, he pointed out that because
women usually had little previous work experience, they were highly
motivated to learn operations to overcome their limited knowledge of
mechanics. Many other contemporary observers also found that women
generally took great pains to carry out their tasks exactly as instructed
and, therefore, produced better and more uniform output. In contrast,
male semi-skilled workers had a tendency to stick to their own way andwere reluctant to unlearn bad habits. Recognizing gender differences in
the learning process, many employers came to believe that women who
started learning jobs from scratch generally acquired proper skills and,in time, became desirable workers.28
Another widely held assumption about women workers was that they
were less inventive and more indecisive than men, but these “female”
traits also proved to be valuable. In the production lines, where mostoperations were simpliﬁed and standardized, the range of workers’ discretion was limited to the minimum and workers no longer needed to beinventive. A work manager of Vultee also pointed out that when amachine broke down, men generally tried to ﬁx it by themselves, but
most women just left it and called their supervisors. This kind of behavior contributed to the reduction of industrial accidents.29
Yet another purported “women’s” characteristic, which many employers had at ﬁrst regarded as an obstacle, was oversensitivity to, anddependence upon, human relations in the workplace. The presumption

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that women were conditioned more by their associates than by the natureof their work created the contention that women were not good at teamwork. In fact, however, as an individual worker was assigned to each
operation in the line production system, employers found that women’s
adaptability to the work environment mattered little. Further, most
women aircraft workers were assigned to “women’s” work and thus segregated from male workers. As a result, the contention that men andwomen would work at different speeds, disturbing the whole production
ﬂow, never became an issue. Overall, female employees in aircraft plants
were highly commended as conscientious workers who not only worked
diligently but also were more appreciative of increased remuneration andadvancement than men. The fact that female employees could be obedient and loyal workers was particularly attractive to the management ofaircraft companies, which needed an additional work force for the duration of the war.30
Analogies between “women’s” work at home and in aircraft plants
were frequently made to promote the image that any woman could do adefense job by taking advantage of her domestic skills. Some of the propaganda stressed similarities between factory tools and kitchen utensils.
For instance, one company insisted that “instead of cutting the lines ofa dress, this woman cuts the pattern of aircraft parts” and that “women
can handle delicate instruments better than men because they have plied
embroidery needles, knitting needles and darning needles all theirlives.”31 Employers also praised women’s skills in all kinds of “housekeeping,” saying that they could be utilized in the workplace. For
instance, the above mentioned GM manager reported that his female
employees excelled at planning, time saving, and economizing materials. A foreman of an aircraft factory also noted that women sometimes
offered practical advice on how to reorganize the work processes. He
reported that one of his new female workers, after operating a lathe forseveral days, made some good suggestions about the ﬂoor- and motionsaving layout of machine tools. The woman said that she simply had
applied her experience in the kitchen to the shop ﬂoor.32
Seventy-six percent of all female aircraft workers worked in airframe
plants, which most actively introduced new production methods andstrove to reorganize labor processes at the government’s expense under
war contracts. Airframe production was usually divided into three
departments: development work, bench fabrication, and assembly. The
ﬁrst two employed ten percent of all airframe workers each and theGENDER AND WORK IN THE AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY DURING WWII

157

assembly department was the largest, employing about seventy-ﬁve percent of the labor force. Most airframe plants assigned newly hired
unskilled workers to this department, while placing skilled workers who
specialized in several advanced operations in the other two sections.33
The development of sub-assembly systems, in which a series of assemblies was divided into components as small as possible before the ﬁnal
assembly, greatly reduced the level of skill and amount of training
required for assembly jobs. Each sub-assembly was done separately bydifferent groups of workers and sometimes at different plants. In manycases, small components were assembled at feeder plants or subcontractors and then brought for ﬁnal assembly at the main plant. Not only
did this promote an efﬁcient segmentation of assembly jobs but also
shortened the ﬁnal assembly line, thus saving ﬂoor space. This signiﬁcantly contributed to a rapid increase in airframe output.34
Women workers concentrated in certain subassembly jobs which
employers regarded as appropriate for women because of their characteristics such as manual dexterity, attentiveness, and meticulousness.
Precision bench assembly and electric assembly employed the largest
proportion of female airframe workers. Most of the jobs were ﬁne assemblies of small-machine parts and components that even unskilled workers could do without the aid of jigs. In electric and radio assembly,
women were engaged in what employers regarded as traditional “women’s” jobs such as cutting wires, soldering, attaching terminals, andscrewing parts together with the use of various bench tools. A large proportion of female airframe workers also assembled the precision devices
of instrument panels such as altimeters, tachometers, turn-banks, andradios, and installed them using small hand tools. While generally men
did the checking and adjustment after the installation, women, if trained,
also performed these functions. Sometimes, the workers had to read blue
prints or pictured layouts to understand the assembly process. Female
assemblers in this section had a higher productivity and a lower turnoverrate than male workers.35
The introduction of the line production system also allowed an inﬂux
of women workers into fuselage assembly, which had been a typicalmen’s domain. A tubular fuselage covered with metal skin was carriedin jigs on a slow moving conveyor while female workers installed powerlines, electrical systems, rudder pedals, and control parts and attachedbulkheads, ﬁrewalls, and canopies to it. Platforms were provided so thateven short women could reach the top parts. There were also low mov-

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able benches on which women slid under the fuselage to install various
ﬁttings beneath. Generally, women worked on the fuselage to the point
where the engine met up with the fuselage and the plane was ready for
the wing and empennage sections.36 Skilled male workers still dominated the assembly of monocoque skin and most of the ﬁnal assembly jobs
even during the war. However, a number of women were assigned to certain operations that employers found suitable for women. Among others, some played an important role in the ﬁnal assembly of theempennage. Their main job was riveting inside the empennages of smallsized ﬁghters and trainers. Foremen found that women about ﬁve feettall were especially desirable as assemblers of the small tails.37
In all subassemblies, riveting, which required the least skill, was themost typical women’s operation. Usually only after a few weeks’ training, a large number of women were assigned to riveting as their ﬁrst operation. They assembled fuselage, ailerons, rudders, elevators, bulkheads,
and wings by using bucking and explosive rivets. Some of them werealso engaged in riveting thin metal skins to instrument panels, which
required manual dexterity and sensitive touch. Instruments for rivetingwere greatly improved and even unskilled workers could handle themeasily and rivet with precision.38
In contrast, fewer women initially worked as welders at aircraft plants
because welding required special training and employers paid a skilledworker’s wage for the job. However, as electric arc welding, which waslight and easier to learn, replaced torch welding, more women took up
welding. The women who were experienced in riveting were often promoted to welding especially as the latter was replacing riveting in someparts of airframe assembly. In particular, technological improvements inspot welding made it light work. Just like riveting, welding required manual dexterity and some employers considered it suitable for women.
Because foremen gave speciﬁc instructions on the position of welding,pressure on materials, welding time, and the amount of electricity,welders had to make few decision on their own. However, since welders
had to endure the heat from hot torches and other unpleasant working
conditions, some employers did not assign women to welding on the
grounds that it would harm women’s health and maternity.39
With the increasing technological complexity of military airplanes,
the number of inspection jobs increased at every stage of assembly andmore and more women were assigned to them. Technological advancement in measuring instruments greatly lowered the level of skills

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159

required for the job and it became relatively easy for inexperienced workers to examine a wide array of airplane parts to ensure they came up to
the standards. Inspectors used instruments such as micrometers, calipers,
scales, and gauges, which required care and concentration, but the operation was repetitive. They also checked castings for any defaults insidewith Magnaﬂux testing equipment and measured the hardness of metal
by Brinnell. Many foremen recognized that although men became boredrather quickly with repetitive inspection, women were more patient andattentive and excelled at measuring and checking small objects at a constant pace.40
In the machine shops of airframe plants, women were also employed
as machine operators. There were more female machine operators in aircraft engine and propeller ﬁrms than in airframe plants. Starting withburring and ﬁling small metal parts and castings, women were promoted to drill press operations as opportunities arose. As drill press operators, they worked on jigs, sensitive drills, and multiple progressive drills
for usual drilling, reaming, and spot facing operations. At Vultee, a personnel director commented that in one operation where a small hole of
1/64 of an inch had to be drilled, no man could drill more than 650 holes
a day, but a woman exceeded this record on her ﬁrst day and kept up the
production of 1000 holes or more a day.41
Only a small number of women, most of whom were trained at vocational school, were employed on milling machines that ground metalparts by revolving cylindrical cutting tools. Operating them became relatively easy with technological improvements in control buttons andlevers. Most female operators were engaged in repeated holing andgrooving of small metal parts. Fewer women operated small turret lathes that processed precise metal parts with more than one cutting tool insequence. Operation was repetitive and the setting up of machines andmost of maintenance work for operators were done by skilled malemachinists.42
III LABOR-MANAGEMENT POLICIES FOR WOMEN AIRCRAFT
WORKERSA.

Wages and Upgrading

In the aircraft industry, wage differences between the sexes were relatively small compared with other defense industries. Since the industry
itself was new and employed only few women before the war, most com-

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panies had no tradition of wage discrimination based on sex. Furthermore, as the industry was expanding on an unprecedented scale during
the war, employers had to attract a large number of female as well as
male workers by offering higher wages than other industries. A survey
conducted by the Women’s Bureau on twenty-three aircraft companies
shows that twenty manufacturers paid the same wages to both sexes
when they were hired. Nine major aircraft manufacturers in California
paid sixty cents per hour to all workers and there was no sexual discrimination in wages at least at the entry level.43 Women’s wages in theaircraft industry varied from job to job, but they were relatively higher
than those in other manufacturing industries. The most highly paid
women were welders who usually started at $1.32 per hour. There were
few differences in remuneration for typical “women’s work”: lightassembler $1.10, riveter $1.00, inspector $1.10 to $1.20, ﬁler $1.15 to$1.30, punch press operator $1.10 to $1.15. The big exception, however, was the covering department where women usually got paid as little
as ninety-ﬁve to ninety-eight cents per hour. As covering had employeda small number of women since prewar years, it had a separate wage
scale exclusively for this “traditional” women’s work.44
Although some progressive companies had formal employee-rating
systems with periodic reviews, they were the exception rather than therule. In many companies, foremen determined merit increases andupgrading. Their prejudices and preconceptions about women’s inferior abilities tended to keep women workers at lower rates and delayed
their promotion. Because of the unmeasurable quality of judgement andpersonal opinion, it is difﬁcult to arrive at any objective conclusion as tohow much the principle of equal pay for equal work was realized at eachplant or in the industry as a whole. Particularly when a job was oftenchanged to adapt it for inexperienced women workers through provisionof manual or mechanical assistance or elimination of certain heavy workand advanced operations, it is difﬁcult to determine whether a woman
was being paid at a proper rate compared with the man whom she
replaced.45
Most employers argued that there should be a wage differential
between men and women because additional overhead costs often rosewhen women were hired, due to the installment of new mechanicaldevices, provision of women’s rest rooms, and the high absenteeism andturnover rates of women. A number of foremen also pointed out thatwomen were not always eager to change from what they called “wom-GENDER AND WORK IN THE AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY DURING WWII

161

en’s” work to “men’s” work, even though it meant an increase in compensation. They reasoned that women’s lack of interest in upgradingcame from their belief that the working conditions in “men’s” jobs werelikely to be less pleasant and their fear that they might not be able to do
the new work. Some women did not want promotion because they liked
their present group of co-workers. Although it is questionable whether
employers were correct in noting that all women aircraft workers lacked
motivation for upgrading, women’s economic situations partly explain
their perceived reluctance. According to a typical wage scale, the earnings of newly hired workers increased ﬁve cents every four weeks, reaching seventy-ﬁve cents after twelve weeks, which was the minimum wage
for unskilled workers in California. Women workers, who got paid theminimum wage, received a weekly wage of thirty-nine dollars including
some extra beneﬁts at aircraft plants, which was sufﬁcient to satisfy theirbasic needs. As a result, most women workers had little enthusiasm for
upgrading and pay raise during the war.46
B.

Job Training

Defense job training programs in southern California in the 1940s
were among the most extensive in the country and enjoyed a high reputation. Before Pearl Harbor, however, most aircraft companies expressed
no interest in the training of women for production, believing that even
if they employed women, it was sufﬁcient to give them only makeshift
on-the-job training as they would be temporary workers for the durationof the war. But most companies lacked even a basic staff for on-the-job
training and had no appropriate training methods for incoming womenwith little experience of factory work. Only some major aircraft companies developed pre-employment training programs for two to six weeks
for new employees, including women, in order to maintain the level ofproductivity and morale and prevent an increase in industrial accidents.
Although there were some exceptional cases like a private vocational
school in Long Beach, which began training women for aircraft jobs as
early as April 1941, it was not until Pearl Harbor that most private training schools opened aircraft courses to women.47
Private vocational schools were numerous and advertised daily in
local papers and on the radio. Fees charged by these private schools
ranged widely between 25–125 dollars. From the outset, aircraft companies were suspicious of the quality of training at these schools. As aresult, private training schools could not as a rule persuade any of the162

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major companies to support them and only local subcontractors andsmall ﬁrms sponsored the training of women there. Several schools in
Los Angeles, which started their ﬁrst aircraft courses for women in
February 1942, reported that failure to offer courses earlier was due tothe unwillingness of local companies to sponsor such training.48
Although attendance at aircraft courses offered by these private vocational schools did not necessarily guarantee future employment in aircraft companies, applicants were often misled into believing that they
were assured placement. Trouble arose frequently between training
schools, aircraft companies, and students who completed the courses.
For instance, Solar Aircraft Company in San Diego stopped hiring students trained at Women’s Aircraft Training Company in Long Beach
when they learned that the Training Company had been giving false guarantees of jobs at Solar to their students.49 However, most aircraft plants
did give preference to graduates of vocational schools over persons without any training.50
National Defense Training Schools sponsored by the federal government were generally slower to offer aircraft courses for women than private schools, but they had better curriculums and instructors and werehighly praised by most manufacturers after 1942. These schools offeredmainly two types of courses: Supplementary National Defense classes
which were open to workers in industries essential to national defense
and designed to up-grade them in their trade, and Pre-employment
National Defense classes which were open to anyone eighteen years ofage and above who could meet certain requirements. Any citizen of theUnited States registered with the state employment ofﬁce could takeclasses at no cost. These aircraft courses trained 323,000 and 374,000
women in 1942 and 1943 respectively, and aircraft companies in
California beneﬁted most from these national schools for the initial training of women.51
National Defense Training Schools enjoyed great popularity among
women who sought aircraft jobs. For instance, when one of these schools
in San Diego started aircraft courses for women in early 1942, women
outnumbered men in defense pre-employment courses two to one. Aftercompleting 150 to 300 hours of courses, ninety percent of womentrainees found jobs at Consolidated-Vultee and others at Solar Aircraft.
According to Mr. Boeing, principal of the school, “the school aimed togive all women who enrolled basic knowledge in the handling of different kinds of tools, some knowledge of metals, and basic training in someGENDER AND WORK IN THE AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY DURING WWII

163

ﬁelds of their choice so that they would be able to qualify at least for one
or more speciﬁc aircraft jobs.” Popular courses with women were electrical assembly, sheet metal assembly, tube bending, riveting, and drillpress. Preference was given to twenty-two to thirty-ﬁve years old
women, but small proportions of younger and older women were also
trained according to their aptitude. In addition to pre-employment training, at least ﬁfty to sixty women always took supplementary courses toacquire advanced skills such as drafting, blue print reading, and stock
keeping. Local aircraft companies sponsored a course in gas welding for
women. After 250 hours of training, students were sent to these companies for a test and if they passed, they were placed on the payroll as
trainees.52
Another national project for vocational training was provided throughthe Engineering, Science, and Management Defense Training (ESMDT)of the U.S. Ofﬁce of Education. In southern California, the Universityof California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California
played a central role in developing the ESMDT. Some ESMDT courses
were designed to train women enrolled at universities for immediate
employment in technical positions at defense plants. For instance, UCLA
offered a twelve-week aircraft engineering drafting course for womenwhich aimed to train selected women as tracers and detailers for the engineering drafting sections of local aircraft companies. Prerequisites werecompletion of two years of college curriculum, but preference was given
to college graduates with mathematics, architecture, or the physical sciences degrees. After studying subjects such as aircraft materials,
mechanics, drafting, drawing, and design sketching, these women were
employed as skilled workers or technicians at plants. Women made up
around twenty-three percent of all enrollees at the ESMDT in 1943.
Unlike the majority of female aircraft workers, most of these womencontinued to work as technicians with expertise even after the war.53
C.

Counseling

Like other defense industries, aircraft manufacturing suffered from ahigh turnover rate of female workers during the war. In April 1943 theaverage labor turnover rates per 100 employees at ten major aircraft
plants in California were 5.8 for men and 9.0 for women. For women it
ranged from 11.1 at Northrop-Hawthorne to 7.0 at Douglas-Long
Beach.54 Turnover was especially high among women aged twenty-ﬁve
to thirty-ﬁve. Major reasons for quitting were family matters, especial-

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CHITOSE SATO

ly childcare and visiting or joining husbands or boyfriends at militarycamp. Some quit to get married or give birth. Others left because they
were exhausted and got ill due to the double burden of factory work andhousehold duties. Only a few gave up their jobs because they were notsatisﬁed with wages and working conditions and planned to change jobs,
probably because aircraft work was one of the most popular manufacturing jobs particularly among working-class women.55
Aircraft companies sought measures to reduce the high labor turnoverof their female employees. At many plants, whenever it transpired thatan employee intended to quit, the personnel section would conduct aninterview to ﬁnd out if there were any remedies for the dissatisfaction.
For instance, at Consolidated, a foreman ﬁrst tried to persuade the worker to stay on and, if that failed, then the interviewer tried again at the timeof termination. After this method had become compulsory, about sixteen
to eighteen percent of those wanting to quit were retained.56 However,there were obvious limitations to this “consult and persuade” method to
reduce labor turnover and absence, especially as many women were leaving jobs not out of dissatisfaction with work or plants but for family reasons.
Recognizing a special need to deal with “women’s problems” bydeveloping all-encompassing programs for female employees, many aircraft companies started a counseling service after 1942 in the personnel
division that was particularly designed for women. Because more thanforty percent of the labor force in the California aircraft industry was
female, employers realized that management responsibilities should bebroadened not only to reduce their absenteeism and turnover rate but also
to advise them on labor issues in general. The decision was based upon
their belief that personal difﬁculties had a deﬁnite effect on productivity and that it was the responsibility of employers to provide the best
working environment possible.57
In the counseling programs, women counselors listened to female
employees’ complaints and opinions about working conditions, supervisors, co-workers, promotion and transfer, and sometimes racial integration in the workplace. They acted as intermediaries for malesupervisors who did not know how to treat incoming women, particularly in matters pertaining to conduct, health, clothing, observance ofsafety rules, and protection of maternity. In a survey of female counselors in defense industries seventy-two percent of the companies

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165

responded that counselors had contributed to the reduction of absenteeism, eighty-four percent that they had held down turnover.58
For instance, Lockheed hired its ﬁrst counselor, Susan Laughlin, when
preparations were being made for the massive inﬂux of women in thefall of 1942. She had at ﬁrst worked as a clerk in the medical unit ofLockheed but a personnel manager noticed her caring personality andassigned her to the job. With few guidelines, she forged ahead and eventually coordinated a counseling program which, by the end of the war,
grew to include seventy counselors. Like Laughlin, most counselors
were white middle-class women in their thirties and forties, but they had
to be able to identify with production workers who were mostly working-class women and help them with not only labor but also personal
problems. An industrial relations manager reported that the successful
counselor often turned out to be an attractive woman with a good personality who “had raised a family and had helped a husband make a success of his career.” Most of these counselors who started their career inmajor aircraft companies during the war continued to work in the ﬁeldof personnel management after the war.59
In addition to labor issues, counselors’ extensive activities included
almost all concerns relating to working women’s everyday life. Not only
did they deal with such problems as childcare, housing, laundry facilities, transportation, and shopping, but they often advised on marital difﬁculties, family quarrels, ﬁnancial difﬁculties, and health problems.
They sometimes relied on community services to ﬁnd appropriate nurseries for the children of their employees, talked to local merchants tokeep the stores open late so that women could shop after work, andarranged laundry service. Laughlin said that she always worked closelywith school boards, social welfare organizations, the YWCA, and dozens
of local women’s groups to ﬁnd solutions to a wide variety of problems.60
Women counselors in major aircraft companies in southern California
regularly had meetings as part of the Aircraft Production Council to share
information and visited one another’s plants. This created a new professional network among industrial counselors during the war.61
D.

Child Care

Turnover reports from aircraft plants indicated that child care was themost urgent issue in the problem of maintaining a stable work force.
Although some companies considered setting up nurseries for theiremployees’ pre-school children, it was too costly and time-consuming

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to build and staff such facilities, considering that most women were temporary workers who would give up their jobs once the war was over. As
a result, most aircraft plants chose to rely on the establishment of public childcare centers in the local community with federal aid.62
With the enactment of the Lanham Act of 1943, federal funds wereappropriated for community facilities in war-impacted areas. In mostareas, funds for childcare were funneled through, and the programs wereadministered by, the local board of education. Although there was neveradequate funding for facilities and the application process was complicated by red tape, Los Angeles managed to develop one of the mostextensive childcare programs in the nation. By obtaining federal funds,
the Los Angeles Area Committee of the Aircraft War Production Council
built sixty-four nurseries for pre-school children and sixty-nine extended care centers for school children aged six to sixteen. In Los Angeles
thirty-seven percent of female aircraft workers had young children underfourteen at home and it was estimated that each child-care center in Los
Angeles serving forty mothers made possible 8,000 productive “manhours” monthly. However, in California, as elsewhere, less than ten percent of all preschool children in need of childcare attended local nurseries
set up under the Lanham Act.63
In San Diego, the situation was similar. Even at the peak of women’s
employment in the fall of 1943, eleven nurseries (two at Navy) and seventeen extended day care centers in the city were being used only up to
about ﬁfty percent of their capacity. According to a community survey
by the Women’s Bureau in November 1943, about twelve thousandworking women in San Diego had children under sixteen and approximately forty percent of these children were cared for in childcare centers. In most cases, grandparents, relatives, husbands, housekeepers, andneighbors took care of children, but some were cared for by older children or just left alone at home.64
Advocates of public childcare service pointed out that mothers were
not well informed about childcare facilities available in the local communities and that some mistakenly believed public service was a kind ofcharity for destitute children whose parents could not afford adequate
care at home. There were rumors in San Diego that children were notbeing fed and cared for properly in these centers. In addition to the lackof appropriate publicity, public nurseries remained underused becauseof the relatively high fees they charged. Although the fees were graduated according to family income with the maximum amount of one dol-

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167

lar per day, they were set high because under the Lanham Act centerswere ﬁnanced ﬁfty percent by the federal government and ﬁfty percent
by fees from parents.65
There was constant demand for nursing facilities for the care of children under two years of age. But administrators themselves were notenthusiastic about starting programs for infants because of their belief
that the employment of mothers with children under two was absolutely undesirable. Indeed, most employers insisted that mothers with smallchildren should be discouraged from accepting jobs unless they provedthat they could count on reliable persons to care for their children at
home. Despite frequent funding crises, local administrators took therequest of aircraft plants in San Diego for twenty-four-hour care formothers working in the second and third shifts seriously. When labor
shortages became increasingly critical in the area in the latter half of1943, the ﬁrst twenty-four-hour nursery opened in Chula Vista adjacentto the Rohr Aircraft Company. From the outset, however, both administrators and employers intended to maintain these child care facilities
only until the end of the war. As more and more women left aircraft jobs
after late 1944, they were either scaled down or closed.66
CONCLUSION
Most female aircraft workers faced massive layoffs as soon as theAllied victory was assured, more than one year before August 1945.
Although a survey taken in late 1943 by the Los Angeles Chamber ofCommerce shows that ﬁfty-one percent of women aircraft workers in
Los Angeles County indicated a desire to stay on with their present
employers, only fourteen percent of them did actually retain their jobs
in June 1946. As a result, in the aircraft industry in Los Angeles, the percentage of women rapidly decreased from a high of over forty percent
in the fall of 1943 to less than eighteen percent in 1946 and 11.9 percent
in 1948.67 Except for sporadic protests by female unionists against the
postwar policy of ﬁring women, most women placidly accepted the layoffs, believing that once the war was over their proper place was in thehome. The prevailing ideology of demobilization propagated by the government, mass media, and the management stressed the resurgence ofdomesticity, which made some women even look forward to returning
home. A female employee at Vultee recalled that she had not felt any
disappointment when she was asked to leave her job, because “there were168

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too many things that I wanted to do with my family.”68
Even though many women hoped to keep working in the postwar period for economic reasons, most of them were forced to leave aircraft jobs
for other occupations because of their lack of seniority and the discriminatory treatment they received from unions. The Selective Service Act
protected the right of male employees who had gone into the military toreturn to their prewar jobs. And in a majority of companies seniority continued to accumulate even during their absence. Although most employers were highly satisﬁed with female workers’ abilities and job
performance and the sex differentials in wages were economicallyadvantageous to them, they did not consider the possibility of permanent
female substitution. As with other defense industries, aircraft manufacturers attempted to restore the sexual division of labor almost along prewar lines during postwar demobilization of the labor force.69
However, aircraft production had been dramatically transformed during the war. Men who returned to their plants after being discharged fromthe military found that the importance of their skills and expertise had
decreased signiﬁcantly due to the technological advances and the reorganization of work processes that had taken place while they were away.
After the abrupt contraction of the production of military aircraft, theindustry gradually expanding again as it converted to the production ofcivilian airplanes in the late 1940s. With the outbreak of the Korean War,the industry faced a growing demand for ﬁghters and bombers again during the military build-up of the Cold War.
Under these circumstances, by the early 1950s the aircraft industry
had increased its labor force beyond its World War II peak. Between
1949 and 1953 when the Korean War ended, employment in the aircraft
industry increased from 281,800 to 779,100. In Los Angeles, the proportion of women among all aircraft workers rose to twenty-ﬁve percent
in 1952 and continued on that level throughout the next decade.70 By thattime, the postwar aircraft industry was again utilizing female labor intensively in specialized operations such as assemblies, inspection, and theoperation of simple machine tools. These jobs, which employers had
regarded as “appropriate” for women during the war years, were established as “women’s” work in the postwar aircraft industry. The wartime
reorganization of work processes and the creation of new labor-management policies for women had laid the groundwork for the postwar
employment of women in the industry.

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NOTES
1
“Widows Seek Plane Jobs,” San Diego Tribune-Sun, 28 January, 1942, in Recordsof the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, 1918–1965, Part II: Womenin World War II, Series A: Unpublished Studies and War Community Survey. 10 reelsof microﬁlms produced by the University Publications of America in 1991 (hereafter
WB-A), Reel 10. The original records are held in Record Group 86, Women’s Bureauof the Department of Labor, National Archives, Washington, D. C.
2“Employment in Airframe, Engine, and Propeller Plants, November 1943–June
1944,” Monthly Labor Review (September 1944): 478.
3
Gerald D. Nash, World War II and the West: Reshaping the Economy (Lincoln,
Neb.:University of Nebraska Press, 1990); James Ric Wilburn, “Social and Economic
Aspects of the Aircraft Industry in Metropolitan Los Angeles during World War II”(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1971). Historicalstudies of women aircraft workers that rely upon interviews include Sherna Berger
Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War and Social Change (New York:
Meridian, 1987), which focuses upon female aircraft workers in Los Angeles, and Judith
R. Johnson, “Uncle Sam Wanted Them Too!: Women Aircraft Workers in Wichita during World War II,” Kansas History 17, no.1 (Spring 1994), which examines female
workers’ experiences at Boeing, Beech, and Cessna. Chester W. Gregory’s pioneering
work, Women in Defense Work during World War II (New York: Exposition Press, 1974)
examines types of women’s aircraft work, training, and working conditions, but does
not explain why the employment of a large number of women became possible in theaircraft industry. To my knowledge, there appeared no work in Japanese on this subject.
4
U.S. Congress, Address of the President of the United States on National Defense,
House Miscellaneous Documents, II, no. 751, 76th Congress, 3rd session, May 1940, 3.
5
G.R. Simonson, “The Demand for Aircraft and the Aircraft Industry, 1907–1958,”
The Journal of Economic History, 20, no.3 (September 1960): 374.
6
Tom Lilley et al., “Conversion to Wartime Production Techniques,” in G.R.
Simonson, ed., The History of the American Aircraft Industry: An Anthology(Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1972), 135.
7
Nash, World War II and the West, 76.
8John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920–1960(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), 152.
9
“Wartime Development of the Aircraft Industry,” Monthly Labor Review(November 1944): 925.
10
The ratio between employees of prime contractors and sub-contractors was sixtysix to thirty-four percent in November 1943. Among workers of prime contractors, seventy-one percent were employed for the production of airframe, twenty-ﬁve percent forengine, and four percent for propeller. See “Wartime Development of the Aircraft
Industry,” 912–913; “Employment in Airframe, Engine, and Propeller Plants, November
1943–June 1944,” 478.
11
“Employment of Women in California Aircraft Industry, June 1943,” WB-B, Reel
21.
12
“Productive Women Employees in Principal Aircraft Plants,” in Record of the
Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, 1918–1965, Part II: Women in WorldWar II, Series B: Subjects and Correspondence Files on War Industries. 35 reels of
microﬁlms produced by the University Publications of America in 1991 (hereafter WBB), Reel 21. The original records are held in Record Group 86, Women’s Bureau of the
Department of Labor, National Archives, Washington, D. C.

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13
William Glenn Cunningham, The Aircraft Industry: A Study in Industrial Location(Los Angeles: L.L. Morrison, 1951), 83–85.
14
United States Employment Service, San Diego,“Study of New Applications,” WBA, Reel 10.
15
Robert C. Weaver, Negro Labor: A National Problem (Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press, 1969), 109,121; Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job
Segregation by Sex during World War II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987),
55; and Paul R. Spickard, “Work and Hope: African American Women in Southern
California during World War II,” Journal of the West, 32, no.3 (July 1993): 73.
16“Sources of Labor Supply in West Coast Shipyards and Aircraft-Parts Plants,”
Monthly Labor Review (November 1942): 931. On wartime shipyards in California, see
Marilynn S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War
II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
17
Karen Tucker Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers during
World War II,” Journal of American History, 69, no.1 (June 1982): 82–97; Weaver,
Negro Labor, 112–113.
18
Rae, Climb to Greatness, 157; Simonson, “The Demand for Aircraft,” 377.
19
Nash, World War II and the West, 73–75.
20“Women Workers in Two Wars,” Monthly Labor Review (October 1943), 658; U.S.
Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Women’s Factory Employment in an
Expanding Aircraft Production Program [Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, no.189-1](1942), 1.
21
Ethel Erickson, “Factory Inspection and Jobs of Women at Vultee Aircraft, January
1942,” WB-B, Reel 10.
22
Ibid.
23
National Industrial Conference Board, Women in Factory Work [Studies in
Personnel Policy, no.41] (NY: NICB, 1942), 5; Anna M. Baetjer, Women in Industry:
Their Health and Efﬁciency (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1946), 15.
24
NICB, Women in Factory Work, 7; Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau,
Effective Industrial Use of Women in Defense Program [Special Bulletin of the Women’s
Bureau, no.1] (1940), 2–3; American Management Association, Special Abilities of
Women [Special Research Report, no.2] (NY: AMA, 1943), 259–260; “Mass Productionof Skilled Workers,” Automotive Industries, 84, no.7 (April 1, 1941): 363–402; “Mass
Production of Airplanes,” Automotive Industries, 84, no.16 (August 15,1941): 26–27,52;“West Coast Airplane Industry Zooms into Big Production,” Automotive Industries, 84,
no.24 (December 15, 1941): 18–23, 68, 70.
25
National Industrial Conference Board, Wartime Pay of Women in Industry [Studies
in Personnel Policy no.58] (NY: NICB, 1943), 8,10; R.C. Turner, “Putting Women to
Work on More and More Jobs,” Factory Management and Maintenance, 101, no.11(November 1943): 94; and Laura Nelson Baker, Wanted: Women in War Industry: The
Complete Guide to a War Factory Job (NY: E.P. Dutton, 1943), 31.
26
NICB, Wartime Pay of Women in Industry, 10.
27
Baker, Wanted: Women in War Industry, 71–72; Evelyn Steele, Wartime
Opportunities for Women (NY: E.P.Dutton, 1943), 44.
28Paul S. Gilbert, “Women? They’re Here to Stay,” Factory Management andMaintenance, 100, no.9 (September 1942): 95–97.
29
W.G. Guthrie, “Why We Like Women in Our Shop,” Factory Management andMaintenance, 101, no.2 (February 1943): 94.
30
Donald A. Laird, “Problems with Female Help,” Factory Management andMaintenance, 101, no.1 (January 1943): 88, 202, 204.

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171

31
Jacob Vander Meulen, Building the B-29 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1995), 42.
32
Guthrie, “Why We Like Women,” 94; Wendell E. Whipp, “Machinist Mates,” Steel(January 11, 1943): 91–92; and Milkman, Gender at Work, 61.
33“Employment in Airframe, Engine, and Propeller Plants, November 1943–June
1944,” 478; “Mass Production of Skilled Workers,” 364, 365, 367.
34
“How Vega Engineering Simpliﬁes Production Methods,” Automotive Industries
186, no.12 (June 15, 1943): 21.
35
Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Ethel Erickson, Women’s Employment in
Aircraft Assembly Plants in 1942 [Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, no.192–1] (1942),
7–8; “Factory Inspection and Jobs of Women at Vultee Aircraft,” 2.
36
Ibid., 3.
37
Ibid., 3
38
Ibid., 2; Erickson, Women’s Employment in Aircraft Assembly Plants in 1942, 6.
39
Erickson, “Factory Inspection,” 2; Erickson, Women’s Employment, 6–7.
40
Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Elizabeth D. Benham, Employment
Opportunities in Characteristic Industrial Occupations of Women [Bulletin of the
Women’s Bureau, no.201](1944), 14–19; Women’s Factory Employment in an
Expanding Aircraft Production Program, 12; “Training Women to Test Aircraft
Engines,” Factory Management and Maintenance 102, no.2 (February 1944): 124–126.
41
Erickson, “Factory Inspection,” 1; Erikson, Women’s Employment, 4.
42Erickson, “Factory Inspection,” 1; Erikson, Women’s Employment, 3–5.
43
“Wage Data in Assembly Plants in the Aircraft Industry, California,” WB-B, Reel
31.
44
Ibid.; “Ten-Hour Day,” WB-B, Reel 31.
45
National Industrial Conference Board, Wartime Pay of Women in Industry (NY:NICB, 1943), 6, 22–23.
46
American Management Association, Assimilating Women Workers: Reducing
Absenteeism [Production Series, no.141] (NY: AMA, 1942),10; Ibid., 26.
47“Training Women Workers: As Observed in Three Large War Production Plants,”
Personnel, 20, no.2 (September 1943): 100–112; “Memo: Defense Training in Southern
California, “ WB-A, Reel 10.
48“National Defense Training, Long Beach” and “Defense Training, LA City Schools,
March 1942,” WB-A, Reel 10.
49“Elden R. Carl, Solar Aircraft Company to Mr. Hostler, California State employment Service, January 14, 1942”; “Carl to Women’s Aircraft Training Company,
January 14, 1942,” WB-A, Reel 10.
50“Memo: Defense Training,” WB-A, Reel 10.
51
Bureau of Training, War Manpower Commission, Training Womanpower,(Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1943), 1–5.
52
“Community Notes, Defense training for women in San Diego, January 1942,” WBA, Reel 10.
53
Bureau of Training, Training Womanpower, 6–7. See also “University of California,
Engineering, Science, and Management Defense Training, Los Angeles Campus” WBA, Reel 10; “The University of Southern California, Engineering, Science, andManagement Defense Training, January–June 1942,” WB-A, Reel 10.
54“How Three War Plants Are Training Women,” Factory Management andMaintenance (August 1943): 300; John Meade, “Why Women Quit,” FactoryManagement and Maintenance (February 1944): 103–105; “Turnover-Women
Employees in War Industry Plants,” Table Labor Turnover-April and May, 1943, WBB, Reel 30.

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55
American Management Association, Assimilating Women Workers: Reducing
Absenteeism [Production Series, no.141] (NY: AMA, 1942), 14–23; “Absenteeism
among Women Workers,” WB-B, Reel 30; “Percent Distribution of Separations by
Reasons and Sex in Selected War Industry Plants-Turnover,” WB-B, Reel 30.
56“Methods Used to Reduce Turnover-Women’s Bureau Plant Interview during
World War II,” WB-B, Reel 30.
57
AMA, 25–29; “Here Is Industry’s Verdict on Women Counselors,” FactoryManagement and Maintenance (March 1944): 125–129.
58“Here Is Industry’s Verdict on Women Counselors,” 126.
59
W.E. Landis, “We Like Women Counselors for Women Workers,” FactoryManagement and Maintenance (October 1943): 102–103; Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie
the Riveter Revisited (NY: Meridian, 1988), 239–55.
60
Gluck, Rosie the Riveter, 253.
61
Ibid., 252.
62
About wartime child care, see Howard Dratch, “The Politics of Child Care in the
1940s,” Science and Society 38 (1974): 167–204; William H. Chafe, American Woman:
Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920–1970 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1972), 166–170; The Women’s Bureau, Women Workers in Ten War
Production Areas and Their Postwar Employment Plans [Bulletin of the Women’s
Bureau, no.209] (1946).
63
Gerald D. Nash, The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second WorldWar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 66, 243; Gluck, 241, 272; The
Women’s Bureau, Women Workers in Ten War Production Areas, 22.
64“Community Factors Contributing to Turnover among Women in San Diego War
Industries-November 1943,” “Child Care Facilities in San Diego Area,” “Analysis ofChild Care Problems of Local Women Applicants,” WB-A, Reel 10.
65“Community Factors Contributing to Turnover among Women in San Diego War
Industries–November 1943,” WB-A, Reel 10.
66“Community Factors Contributing to Turnover among Women in San Diego War
Industries/November 1943,” WB-A, Reel 10.
67
Gluck, Rosie the Riveter, 261.
68
Ibid., 168–169.
69“Postwar Adjustment of Aircraft Workers,” Monthly Labor Review (November,1946): 707.
70Ibid., 708.