page_title: Anita Parkhurst Willcox
section_title: Conflicts between art career and gender roles
hierarchical_section_title: Anita Parkhurst Willcox / Conflicts between art career and gender roles
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for League for Industrial Democracy, designed by Anita Willcox during the Great Depression, showing solidarity with struggles of workers and poor in America
context_page_description: Anita Parkhurst Willcox was an American artist, feminist and pacifist. Her career as a graphic illustrator was interrupted by 15 months spent entertaining the troops in World War I, which left her passionately anti-war. During the 1920s, she gained fame for drawing "the New American Woman" image, but this contradicted her personal experiences as wife and mother. By the 1930s, she drew images that reflected her own life and beliefs. She was inspired by Gandhi's non-violence, and in Mao's China; but met rejection and censorship during the McCarthy era. Despite this, she continued painting until her death in 1984.
context_section_description: Between 1921 and 1926 Willcox gave birth to four children; she adopted a fifth in 1930. In 1923, following the birth of her third child, Willcox spent six months in bed with puerperal fever (childbirth fever). This led her to question the contradictions between the idealized images she produced, and the actualities of women's lives. 
  In 1925, Willcox wrote a book called "Between Jobs and Babies", exploring the changing nature of women's roles in industrial society. Leading women academics responded positively; Edith Stern, reviewing the book for Boni and Liveright, commented: "This is exactly the book I have wanted to have written."  Despite the reviews, Willcox was unable to find a publisher.
  Arguing that the idealized "pretty girls" she drew for commercial illustration were "socially pernicious", Willcox quit her career as a commercial artist.
caption: League for Industrial Democracy poster by Anita Willcox, 1932
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