The Great Plains during World War II

3. Women at Work

Women took a host of jobs outside the home during World War II. Between 1940 and 1945 the number of women in the workforce expanded by more than 50 percent, from 11.9 to 18.6 million, for 37 percent of all workers. Approximately 75 percent of these newly employed women were married, and nearly 50 percent of all women took employment at some point during the war. High pay, patriotism, and increased status drew them to the defense industries. At the Cornhusker Ordnance Plant in Grand Island, Nebraska , women worked at every job (including pouring liquid tnt into bomb casings), except the most physically demanding positions. Overall, female industrial workers understood that they filled traditionally male jobs and would lose them when the war ended. Even so, World War II gave many Great Plains women their first job outside the home. Most liked the freedom, independence, and money.1 Women did not immediately enter the industrial workforce, however . When the war began, employers believed that the male labor supply would remain adequate, and they doubted the physical and mechanical ability of women to handle many defense industry jobs. By late 1942, however, the labor situation had changed dramatically, and employers welcomed female workers. Nationwide, women responded in great numbers. At first they were mostly young, unmarried , and unskilled. Great Plains women constituted part of this group, although the records do not clearly indicate their numbers other than to suggest that thousands held wartime positions. As the war progressed, female workers tended to be married with husbands three | Women at Work women at work 62 in the military and older, with approximately half over thirty-five years of age by the end of the war.2 In January 1941, the Cessna Airplane Company employed only six women to work in the electrical department. After a month on the job they wired a half dozen instrument panels per day where two men had wired one every three or four days. The supervisor of the department attributed their productivity to nimble fingers compared to men. Cessna officials admitted that they were experimenting to determine whether women could do the work, and some believed that, if the United States entered the war, women would be needed to keep the defense industries producing. By February more than seven hundred women waited for admittance to the National Defense Training School in Wichita in order to learn sheet metal work, woodworking, and blueprint reading. At the same time the School of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma suffered a severe loss of faculty, nurses, and staff, and the medical director of the university hospital urged women to “take advantage of the opportunity to serve and receive training.” Across the Great Plains officials counted the registered nurses in their hospitals and clinics and asked whether they would accept military assignments immediately or only in an emergency. The U.S. Public Health Service anticipated that many older nurses would be needed at home if the younger professionals joined the army or the navy.3 Although the training programs lagged, some Great Plains women anticipated that the United States would eventually become involved in the war, and they began preparing for it. They understood that, if war came, many men would necessarily leave their industrial jobs and that, if women were trained, they could qualify for highpaying positions. In Oklahoma City some women enrolled in the Oklahoma Aircraft School, where they learned the craft of riveting and that the terms dimple and dolly had nothing to do with sex appeal. Other women studied radio repair and drafting. Moreover, during the summer of 1941 the National Defense Training School in Wichita finally accepted a special class of twenty-four women to be trained specifically for employment at the Cessna aircraft plant, where they would make wood ribs for planes. If the eight-week class 63 figure 4. Women entered the war industry workforce because employers needed their labor not only to replace men who had joined the military but also to meet production and repair schedules mandated by federal contracts. This photograph shows the first all-female engine repair crew at Tinker Field, Oklahoma. (Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries) women at work 64 proved successful, more women would be trained. Soon, Wichita women enrolled in courses at local high schools under the national defense training program. There, vocational instructors taught various skills, particularly...