“We Can Do It”
–War Poster

1930-1962

During the 1930s, the Great Depression impacted women and their families across the country. Yet women’s collective action did not cease. While they rarely spoke of a “women’s movement,” American women mobilized for labor rights, victory, and civil rights. Their efforts demonstrated the power of women’s citizenship in action and laid the groundwork for the decades to come. Women went to work and organized unions, reshaping the labor movement and the New Deal. When war came, women marched into factories and auxiliary brigades, taking on the full responsibilities of wartime citizenship. During and after the war, Black women and their allies organized civil rights campaigns to make the nation live up to its democratic ideals. Women’s work was essential to these struggles, but even within social movements, activists faced sexism and gender discrimination. Women drew on these experiences when they began marching for women’s liberation in the 1960s. In so doing, they manifested the words of the famous war poster: “We Can Do It.”

Labor unions filmed rallies and May Day parades, the federal government produced slick films to recruit women to military auxiliaries and industrial war work, and news organizations covered efforts to desegregate schools.

International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union May Day Parade, New York City, ca. 1935
The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library

Glamour Girls of 1943, 1943. National Archives

Black Mothers Protest School Discrimination in New York, 1958
WSB Newsfilm Collection,The University of Georgia Libraries

Riva Helfond (1910–2002)
Curtain Factory, 1938
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Estate of Riva Helfond and the Susan Teller Gallery, New York, New York

Brooklyn-born artist Riva Helfond (1910-2002) worked in a factory to survive during art school. The Works Progress Administration employed her as a teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center. Her social realist style reveals the contemporary conditions of women’s labor. Helfond became active in the unionization of artists.

A New Deal for Women

After Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election in 1932, women participated in remaking the nation from above and below. As with men, working-class women lost their jobs in factories and went to work in offices, schools, and social service agencies. They joined unions and launched campaigns to support members and their families. Women also used the power of the federal government to create resources such as the first federal welfare programs for children and unmarried mothers. Leading women of Roosevelt’s administration, including Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, National Youth Administrator Mary McLeod Bethune, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt supported unions and helped shape the New Deal. In these tumultuous years, women artists and writers in the Works Progress Administration captured American women at work and on the march.

“Forgotten women,” unemployed and single, in job demand parade / World-Telegram staff photo, 1933
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Women and World War II

American women were integral to the US war effort, both at home and overseas. Thousands joined Army and Navy auxiliaries, supporting US troops. Thousands more sold war bonds, saved scrap metal and oil, and worked in factories to build the materiel of war. Congress funded child care centers for the children of these “Rosie the Riveters.” In 1940, at the urging of civil rights organizers, FDR forbade segregation of the war industries, creating integrated workplaces where women struggled for equal pay and recognition in unions. Wartime concerns also shaped how women were courted as voters, especially since absentee voting procedures were uneven and many men in the armed services were unable to cast ballots. Women would cite their service to bolster claims to full and equal citizenship in years to come.

Antoinette Mauro’s drafting tools, ca. 1942
Antoinette Mauro Collection, MC/1
Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Archives, Brooklyn, New York

Draftswoman Antoinette Mauro and coworkers in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard, ca. 1942
Antoinette Mauro Collection, MC/1; Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Archives, Brooklyn, New York

Building a “Vengeance” dive bomber at Vultee-Nashville, 1943
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington D.C.

Fictionalized images of “Rosie the Riveter”–including those by artists J. Howard Miller (for the War Production Coordinating Committee) and Norman Rockwell (for the Saturday Evening Post)–have captured the American imagination since World War II. Nearly 350,000 women joined the war effort, including the women depicted here in shipyards and aircraft-building factories.

Congress of Industrial Organizations
A Woman’s Guide to Political Action, 1944
Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society

This booklet, created by the CIO, a federation of labor unions, argued that “the future of America lies in the hands of our woman voters” because many men were uprooted and not able to vote.

Equal Jobs, Equal Rights?

After the war, many women lost their jobs as servicemen returned. Male-led unions advocated the restoration of male labor and fought for new laws barring women from certain positions, sometimes using protection as a rationale. While many women supported safeguards such as eight-hour days, others saw them as restraints. For example, in 1948 the Supreme Court upheld a Michigan law that denied women bartending licenses, arguing that women tending bar could “give rise to moral and social problems.” Brooklyn’s Bar Maids Local 101 fought back against similar rules and kept their jobs. These struggles captured the enduring debate over an Equal Rights Amendment, pitting those who believed workers should keep hard-won protections against others who sought equality under the law.

“Chippers,” Women War Workers of Marinship Corp, 1942
National Archives and Records Administration

National Woman’s Party
Do you know that a woman does not have...pamphlet, 1943
The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism

Barmaids in Arms, 1950
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library

Campaigns for Equal Justice

In 1944, while soldiers fought for democracy abroad, the rape of Recy Taylor in Alabama sparked a nationwide campaign for equal justice. Led by Rosa Parks and the Montgomery NAACP, a coalition of civil rights activists, labor organizations, and women’s groups petitioned the governor’s office, demanding that the six rapists be arrested and tried. Such organizing shaped civil rights efforts across the country, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama to voter registration drives in San Francisco and school desegregation protests in New York City. Meanwhile, the pro-segregation Massive Resistance movement increasingly drew white women into grassroots and national politics. These proved to be formative trials for a generation of women of all races and classes, who witnessed the power of direct action. Many also confronted the ways such campaigns privileged male leadership. Activists eventually would draw on these experiences to launch new movements energized by collective action.

J.H. Lawson,
Three African American women with sign reading, “Segregation is discrimination”, ca. 1948
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

National Urban League and National Council of Negro Women
A Voteless People is a Hopeless People flyer, 1956
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Frances Albrier Collection

Cox Studio, Women activists with signs for voter registration, 1956
Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Frances Albrier Collection

Rosa Parks, Letter to Governor in support of Recy Taylor, ca. 1944
Alabama Department of Archives and History

Recy Taylor was 24 years old when she was raped by six white men while walking home from church. Activists called out the enduring sexual violence against Black women and emphasized the hypocrisy of claims that lynching was a justified response to Black men raping white women. Despite Rosa Parks’ hopeful tone in this letter, the accused were not indicted.

Flyer encouraging people to participate in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
Alabama Department of Archives and History