Rosie The Riveter: a Look at Whom Women Used to Be

Compared to our parents, and their parents, most of us hardly ever encounter the idea of gender discrimination. While it could just be my isolated opinion, it seems to me that women today don't feel constrained to do certain jobs, or stay at home having children. The days where women were simply secretaries, kindergarten teachers, or housewives seem to be distant memory to most of us today, and while we cannot say gender discrimination is entirely gone, it is vastly decreased. Today, former first lady Hillary Clinton is a senator, many of the most powerful CEOs are women, and even my girlfriend is a civil engineer.

It never crosses my mind that a woman might not be able to do the same jobs that I can, nor do I feel that I don't want women to be able to compete with me. It is partially my fairly liberal upbringing, but also that I've been exposed to environments where it is expected that, regardless of sex, one will go on to greater accomplishments. In 'Rosie The Riveter', we youthful occupants of the 21st century got to see what it was like for women not much more than half a century ago. In less than 6 decades, we've gone from a society where women were supposed to be beholden to their men, to one where they are very nearly equal in many respects. Given the lengthy history of the oppression of women, such rapid progress boggles my mind. It seems to me that World War II give the advancement of American women's rights just the boost it needed, much to the chagrin of the male-dominated society. As we saw in 'Rosie The Riveter', women could work just as well as men, and while it was suppressed in those times, it seems that in many cases they were better than the men they replaced. Women, for the first time ever, were literally placed in men's shoes, and realized for themselves that they could indeed do more than simply raise children, do housework, and shuffle papers. I cannot conceive what this must have felt like. For the first time in their lives, women were given options and power.

This movie showed how the wartime utilization of the women changed their perspective forever. The government and social structure of the United States tried to shuffle them back to their original "places", but the change had already occurred. Women were equals, and because of their wartime experiences they knew it. 'Rosie The Riveter' gave us a glimpse of how the metamorphosis of women's rights was jump started, when hundreds of thousands were given the opportunity to do the jobs of the men at war, and filled those roles without losing a step.