page_title: We Can Do It!
section_title: Westinghouse Electric
hierarchical_section_title: We Can Do It! / Background / Westinghouse Electric
caption_attribution_description: English: A US wartime propaganda poster by J. Howard Miller, produced for Westinghouse under a federal program. Miller is better known for the "We Can Do It!" poster from the same series.
context_page_description: "We Can Do It!" is an American World War II wartime poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost female worker morale.
  The poster was little seen during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called "We Can Do It!" but also called "Rosie the Riveter" after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The "We Can Do It!" image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. The image made the cover of the Smithsonian magazine in 1994 and was fashioned into a US first-class mail stamp in 1999. It was incorporated in 2008 into campaign materials for several American politicians, and was reworked by an artist in 2010 to celebrate the first woman becoming prime minister of Australia. The poster is one of the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration.
  After its rediscovery, observers often assumed that the image was always used as a call to inspire women workers to join the war effort.
context_section_description: In 1942, Miller was hired by Westinghouse Electric's internal War Production Coordinating Committee, through an advertising agency, to create a series of posters to display to the company's workers. The intent of the poster project was to raise worker morale, to reduce absenteeism, to direct workers' questions to management, and to lower the likelihood of labor unrest or a factory strike. Each of the more than 42 posters designed by Miller was displayed in the factory for two weeks, then replaced by the next one in the series. Most of the posters featured men; they emphasized traditional roles for men and women. One of the posters pictured a smiling male manager with the words "Any Questions About Your Work? ... Ask your Supervisor."
  No more than 1,800 copies of the 17-by-22-inch (559 by 432 mm) "We Can Do It!" poster were printed. It was not initially seen beyond several Westinghouse factories in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the midwestern U.S., where it was scheduled to be displayed for two five-day work weeks starting Monday, February 15, 1943. The targeted factories were making plasticized helmet liners impregnated with Micarta, a phenolic resin invented by Westinghouse. Mostly women were employed in this enterprise, which yielded some 13 million helmet liners over the course of the war. The slogan "We Can Do It!" was probably not interpreted by the factory workers as empowering to women alone; they had been subjected to a series of paternalistic, controlling posters promoting management authority, employee capability and company unity, and the workers would likely have understood the image to mean "Westinghouse Employees Can Do It", all working together. The upbeat image served as gentle propaganda to boost employee morale and keep production from lagging. The badge on the "We Can Do It!" worker's collar identifies her as a Westinghouse Electric plant floor employee; the pictured red, white and blue clothing was a subtle call to patriotism, one of the frequent tactics of corporate war production committees.
caption: Another poster by J. Howard Miller from the same series as "We Can Do It!"
exif: {"Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.10.20", "Image DateTime": "2021:02:12 02:34:27", "Image ExifOffset": "136", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "197", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "256", "Thumbnail BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail PhotometricInterpretation": "6", "Thumbnail SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "262", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "12944", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB"}