Rosie the Riveter: Reshaping the Workforce During WWII

If you’ve ever wondered, “Who is Rosie the Riveter in real life?”, the answer is that she was millions of women. Rosie the Riveter wasn’t one person, but she is one of the most enduring icons of American history, representing the estimated 6 million women who entered the workforce during World War II to help build planes, ships and bombs for the war effort. “Rosie” symbolizes female empowerment and the breaking of traditional gender roles.

Her impact extended beyond the war years, however. As an icon, she helped lay a foundation for future generations of working women and even influenced movements for workplace rights and gender equality.

The Origin of Rosie the Riveter

The origins of Rosie the Riveter stem from both real-life women who worked in industrial roles during World War II and artistic depictions that captured the spirit of the era. While there is no single “real Rosie,” several women have been associated with the image and legacy of Rosie the Riveter.

Mae Krier is one of the women recognized by the Department of Defense as an original Rosie the Riveter. Like many women of her generation, the North Dakota native worked in aviation factories, contributing to the production of warplanes. She and some friends got jobs at Boeing in the 1940s, where she said she fell in love with the B-17 bomber. Her role was to transport rivets for 93 cents an hour.

“She fought Hitler by day and jitterbugged at night, working to win a war and prove women’s worth along the way,” is how The Philadelphia Inquirer summarized Krier’s WWII role.

Another embodiment of Rosie the Riveter was Rose Will Monroe, a Michigan tomboy who took a job building B-24 bombers at Willow Run, which at the time was the largest manufacturing operation in the world. When she captured the attention of a filmmaker who wanted to feature her, a song called “Rosie the Riveter” was already popular, so her name being Rose was just a coincidence.

Who Created Rosie the Riveter?

As we’ve seen, there was no single origin of the Rosie the Riveter character. She had many inspirations. However, many point to that 1943 song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb as being a key moment in the creation of the character of Rosie. The song was inspired by a woman named Rosalind P. Walter, a WWII riveter for Corsair fighter planes.

It was this tune that inspired a Norman Rockwell painting that was featured on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1943. Rockwell brought Rosie to life as a muscular woman in denim overalls, holding a lunchbox labeled “Rosie” and stepping on a copy of “Mein Kampf.”

Besides Rockwell’s painting, the iconic Rosie image — and perhaps the most famous one — is the “We Can Do It!” poster. Created in 1943 by J. Howard Miller, it features a woman in a blue work shirt. The design, originally created for Westinghouse Electric as part of a campaign to boost worker morale, was not widely associated with Rosie the Riveter during the war, but it later became a powerful symbol of women’s strength and accomplishments, in addition to being the source of a decades-long mystery.

Related: 5 Interesting Facts About World War II Icon ‘Rosie the Riveter’ and the Famous Poster

What Is the True Story of Rosie the Riveter?

For years, various women, including Geraldine Hoff Doyle, were theorized to be the model for the “We Can Do It!” poster. But further research indicated that Naomi Parker Fraley was most likely the image’s inspiration.

A news photographer snapped a photo of Fraley when she was at work at a machine shop at the former Alameda Naval Air Station in California. The 20-year-old was wearing coveralls and a polka-dot bandana. If you’ve ever wondered, why did Rosie the Riveter wear a bandana? It’s because such a head covering was required on the types of jobs the riveters did, for safety reasons.

Newspapers across the country ran the photo of Fraley. But it took 70 years and the dogged obsession of a scholar named James J. Kimble to set the record straight that Fraley had actually been the source of the beloved image, not Doyle.

Working Women and WWII

Behind the poster were the women themselves. During WWII, the demand for labor skyrocketed, creating unprecedented opportunities for women to enter the workforce in roles traditionally held by men.

This shift was not limited to factory work. U.S. women have helped in war efforts since the Revolutionary War as nurses, seamstresses and cooks. And women later joined the service in more formal roles, such as the U.S. Navy’s Yeomanettes. During WWII, women took on more formal military roles through organizations such as the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).

“More [than] 350,000 [women] enlisted in the service as new opportunities opened in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Army Air Corps, and Coast Guard,” according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. “Combat roles were off limits to women, but they still played an influential part in supporting our war efforts.”

Related: America’s Rosies: The Women Who Built the Arms That Led to Peace

Women’s Army Corps (WACs)

The Women’s Army Corps was established in 1942 to give women a way to serve in non-combat roles, so that more men could be deployed to the front lines. WACs worked in communications, administration, mechanics and medical fields, proving that women could perform critical military functions with skill and efficiency. Their contributions helped pave the way for the permanent inclusion of women in the U.S. armed forces.

Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs)

The WASPs were civilian pilots who ferried aircraft, tested new planes and trained male pilots. More than 1,000 women served as WASPs, a role that required skill and guts.

One example was found at the Boeing plant in Seattle, for instance, where a young woman named Hazel Ying Lee — trained to ferry aircraft — defied expectations by not only working on aircraft but also becoming one of the few Chinese-American pilots in the WASP program. The first Chinese-American female aviator, she was also the first Chinese-American woman to fly for the U.S. military, according to the U.S. Air Force.

Though the women of the WASP program weren’t granted military status at the time, their service was later recognized, and they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.

WAVES, SPARS and more

Through the U.S. Navy’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), women worked as radio operators, intelligence officers, mechanics and chemists, with many playing key roles in naval aviation and codebreaking. More than 85,000 WAVES worked in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields as air traffic controllers, cryptologists, draftsmen, meteorologists and translators during WWII.

The Coast Guard established SPARS, where women managed port operations, communications and supply chains, freeing men for sea duty. The Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, created in 1943, gave women the chance to take on clerical, mechanical and aviation support jobs under the motto “Free a Marine to Fight.”

Breaking Boundaries

What does Rosie the Riveter symbolize? The war effort forced the nation to rethink long-held beliefs about women in the workforce. Women who had never considered careers outside the home found themselves wearing coveralls, handling heavy machinery and mastering complex technical tasks.

One such woman was Elinor Otto, who began working as a riveter at the Rohr Aircraft Corp. in California shortly after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. At the factory, suitors swarmed the dark-haired beauty so ardently that the bosses had to crack down on the distracted male co-workers. She soon earned respect from them as she matched their speed and precision on the production line.

The trailblazing Otto was an unusual Rosie in that her efforts continued far beyond wartime. In fact, she was still helping to build airplanes well into her 90s, at Boeing’s C-17 plant in Long Beach. The recipient of the Air Force Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, she died at age 104 in 2023.

Beyond factory floors, women stepped into roles requiring ingenuity and precision. A group of women at the Harvard Computation Lab, including pioneers such as Grace Hopper, worked as human “computers,” calculating ballistic trajectories and laying the groundwork for modern programming. Hopper invented the COBOL programming language while enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

Read Next: 6 Amazing Female Military Pioneers

Rosie’s Role in the Workforce

When men left for the front lines, the aviation industry turned to women to fill the void. Aircraft factories, once an all-male domain, swelled with hundreds of thousands of women taking on roles as riveters, assemblers, inspectors and machinists.

Meanwhile, women in munitions plants — often called “munitionettes” or “powder girls” — faced grueling, high-risk conditions. At the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant in Illinois, for example, workers packed explosives into shells with meticulous care, knowing a single mistake could prove fatal.

Women also played pivotal roles in logistics and supply chain management. They ran massive warehouses, operated cranes and kept railyards moving efficiently.

The war effort relied on women in every sector, from transportation to telecommunications, demonstrating that they weren’t just filling in for absent men; they were excelling in ways that would reshape the workforce for generations.

Rosie’s Legacy and Cultural Impact

Although many women were encouraged to return to domestic roles after the war, Rosie the Riveter’s influence endured. Her image reemerged during the feminist movement of the 1970s and remains a powerful symbol of female strength and equality. Today, Rosie’s legacy continues to inspire women pursuing careers in traditionally male-dominated fields such as STEM.

The story of “Rosie” is a reminder of the importance of opportunities for women in all industries. In this way, she has transcended being a wartime figure. Her legacy lives on in modern efforts toward gender equality, workplace diversity and the continued push for women’s representation in leadership roles.

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