In Richmond alone, they numbered tens of thousands and helped send 747 ships and 60,000 tanks into battle. And then the government, blunt as a rivet, told Rosie to go home. It was time to make babies. A narrator voiced approving praise.
Historians now look at that message as a scrambled sign of progress.
Women fought for standing in labor unions. The government provided day care for many Rosies. Married women, in particular, entered the work force in record numbers. The nearly two decades in between, some argue, were less about a quiet postwar return to the home than a period of subterranean anger over a breath of opportunity snuffed out. Others point to a shift in priorities, and power, in the home.