5 Interesting Facts About World War II Icon 'Rosie the Riveter' and the Famous Poster

In 1940, just more than 11 million women were employed outside the home. By the end of World War II, that number had spiked to more than 20 million women. Part of the reason for the jump was the "Rosie the Riveter" campaign from the Office of War Information, which was determined to get more women to work and free men to fight.  

After all, somebody had to make the weapons, tanks and aircraft the menfolk were using to fight the war, and those were the WOWs: Woman Ordnance Workers. To encourage women to get to the factories while keeping morale high, a slew of propaganda was created by both the government and corporations to keep women coming to work and their spirits high. 

The "We Can Do It" poster many of us think about when someone mentions Rosie the Riveter was just one in a long line of war production posters, but ...

1. The "We Can Do It" poster was not the original Rosie the Riveter. 

I know, half of the people reading this are already emailing me to tell me I'm full of it. The other half are just silently hating me. But the woman featured on the "We Can Do It" poster originally had nothing to do with "Rosie the Riveter" at the time. 

The poster was produced internally for Westinghouse Electric by J. Howard Miller in 1943. The WOWs didn't see it unless they worked at Westinghouse, on the factory floor, making helmet liners. 

2. "Rosies" became a social movement.

The original Rosie was the start of a movement that began in 1942, shortly after the United States entered the war. That year, bandleader Kay Kyser released a song called "Rosie the Riveter." It aired on radio networks across the country, and audiences thought it absolutely slapped. 

The song inspired Norman Rockwell to paint a depiction of Kyser's Rosie for an issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell's painting was then used by the Treasury Department for war bond drives throughout the war. There was even an official WOW bandana, made by the War Department for female ordnance workers. It featured white Army ordnance logos on a red background.

Miller's "We Can Do It" poster was never part of the drive and faded away until it was rediscovered in 1982 for a Washington Post article. 

3. There is no single inspiration for Rosie. 

Songwriters Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb were inspired to write "Rosie the Riveter" by Rosalind P. Walter, a woman working on an assembly line riveting Vought F4U Corsair fighters. 

Rockwell's Rosie was clad in blue overalls, with a rivet gun on her lap and a boot on "Mein Kampf." His model was 19-year-old telephone operator Mary Louise Doyle.

As for the Westinghouse poster, the subject was then-20-year-old Naomi Parker, who was photographed while working at Alameda Naval Air Station, California, in 1942. Titled "All This And Overtime, Too," Parker was seen wearing a bandana and coveralls, just like the woman in the Westinghouse poster. 

4. "We Can Do It" was not a famous slogan during the war. 

After its rediscovery, the "We Can Do It" poster garnered worldwide fame, which naturally led many to speculate about its origins. In many cases, the origin was outright fabricated. Even The New York Times wrote it became "a worldwide symbol of women in the defense industry in World War II." 

Except that it was not. Westinghouse Electric paid for the ad campaign, which had a print run of about 1,000, according to Westinghouse historian Charlie Ruch. That kind of circulation would severely limit its spread in the U.S., let alone the entire world.

5. Not everyone loves Rosie the Riveter.

After its rediscovery, the "We Can Do It" poster became a worldwide feminist symbol, replicated on everything from T-shirts to postage stamps. Whether it's Miller's or Rockwell's depiction, Rosie is seen as an empowering icon, a revolutionary moment where women left the home to help win the war of good versus evil.

But not everyone sees it that way. Researchers Karen Anderson, Susan M. Hartmann and Maureen Honey argue that Rosie is more of a tragic figure. They say that the "Rosies" weren't all married housewives; instead, most were single women who were already in the workforce. They went to work in war production jobs to face prejudice while earning lower wages than men, all to be pressured to give those jobs up when veterans returned. 

Most of all, they argue, the Rosie the Riveter campaign served to reinforce the stereotypes about American women at the time.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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