When I was growing up in Long Beach, this school didn’t exist yet, and that’s a pity, for me, and for thousands of other girls who didn’t have the option of going HERE:

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Nailing a trade at Rosie the Riveter High

Long Beach charter school seeks to put young women in nontraditional jobs such as welding and carpentry.

By Bob Pool
December 3, 2009

Students are welding the old to the new at Rosie the Riveter High School.

The Long Beach charter school was created in 2007 to help prepare teenage girls for careers as welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and other trades.

Today, its 50-member student body includes girls and boys, but its organizers still attempt to break down barriers for women seeking careers in what largely remains a man’s world.

“It’s about trying to change the way society looks at women,” said Lynn Shaw, who helped create Rosie the Riveter High. “We just feel that women should have an equal opportunity.”

Shaw, who lives in Long Beach, teaches electrical technology at Long Beach City College.

She heads the board of directors for Women in Non Traditional Employment Roles, a nonprofit economic development group that sponsors the charter school.

She knows plenty about nontraditional jobs.

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Edith Kent just turned 100 this past year.  Her fondest memories?
Those of being a woman welder in the Plymouth shipyards, where she was the first female to be paid a man’s wage.

Edith Kent, wartime welder and the first woman to receive equal pay, turns 100

Being 4ft 11in paid off for Edith Kent.

Her diminutive stature meant that she could crawl inside torpedo tubes — and helped her to become the first woman in Britain to earn the same wage as her male colleagues while working as a welder during the Second World War.

This week Mrs Kent celebrated her 100th birthday with a tea dance at a hotel with 50 family and friends, including her sister Minna, 105.

Mrs Kent began working at Devonport dockyard in Plymouth in 1941 but was so good that she received wage parity in 1943 — which was unheard of at the time.

Starting on five pounds and six shillings (£5 6s) a week as a skilled female worker, she was soon given a rise to £6 6s. A male manual worker in 1943 would have been on a weekly wage of only £5 8s 6d.

Mrs Kent, who still lives near the dockyard, said she was extremely proud of her signal achievement but she was embarrassed at the time.

She said: “I got the job because my brothers worked at the dockyard and they thought I would be good at it. I was the first woman to work as a welder there. It made me a bit uncomfortable that I was the first woman to earn the same as the men — and in some cases I was earning more than them. All the men I worked with were marvellous and they didn’t seem to mind me earning the same.

“None of them ever dared say it, but I think they knew I was worth as much as them, if not more,” she said. Mrs Kent took time off to have her only child, Jean, in 1942 and then went back to work — leaving the baby with one of her sisters. She worked at the dockyard until 1945 when the male workers returned from war and she left to work as a barmaid.

Mrs Kent’s daughter, Jean, 66, said: “My mother has lived a remarkable life. After I was born she went straight back to work. She was a pioneer of girl power.”

Mrs Kent, who still lives near the dockyard, said she was extremely proud of her signal achievement but she was embarrassed at the time.

She said: “I got the job because my brothers worked at the dockyard and they thought I would be good at it. I was the first woman to work as a welder there.

It made me a bit uncomfortable that I was the first woman to earn the same as the men — and in some cases I was earning more than them. All the men I worked with were marvellous and they didn’t seem to mind me earning the same.

“None of them ever dared say it, but I think they knew I was worth as much as them, if not more,” she said.

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I defy you not to laugh at this video.  Seriously.  This is a short clip about recruiting women to work during WWII from a 1943 propaganda film entitled ”Manpower”.  Some of my favorite quotes were:

“Employers find that women can do many jobs as well as men.  Some jobs, better.”

and

“They discover that factory work is usually no more difficult than housework.”

Take it with a grain of salt, but remember, it just goes to show you how far we have come in the past 60 years!

From the Sept. 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics.  Enjoy!

Did you own any action figures when you were a kid?
Superman?  Jedis?  X-Men?

I didn’t, probably because I never read any comic books until my brothers came along.  What we did have though, were real people action figures.

I’m not even kidding.  There’s a company out there called Accoutrements that makes action figures out of historical characters.

There’s Marie Antoinette with a detachable head, Houdini wrapped up in a straight jacket, Van Gogh with a bandage over his ear, and many more –>

I myself am the proud owner of both a Jane Austen and a DaVinci figurine, and they sit on my bookshelf, keeping each other company whilst I am away, or so I like to think…

But, for the purposes of this blog, I would like to introduce you to the action figure of none other than Rosie the Riveter.  That’s right — our very own pseudo-mascot, doll-size — the perfect desk-top inspiration!

She comes with her very own spring-action rivet gun and a lunchbox, just like in the original Norman Rockwell painting.  Plus, she’s posable!

Original Caption: Line Up of Some of Women Welders Including The Women’s Welding Champion of Ingalls [Shipbuilding Corp., Pascagoula, Ms]., 1943

U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 86-WWT-85-35

Photographer: Beebe, Spencer

Subjects:
World War, 1939-1945
Labor
Women

Persistent URL: http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=522890

Just caught this article over on the NY Times about a Rosie.   The thing that shocked me, its been 60 years!  Not that I was alive then, but I guess because Rosie the Riveter, the icon, is still so prevalent, it seems it can’t have been 60 years ago!  And let me just put a call out to all who know a Rosie the Riveter maybe now is a good time to do an interview, document their story before its too late….

60 Years Later, ‘Rosies’ Have Their Day

By ASHLEY SOUTHALL

Nearly 60 years later, Garnet Kozielec still marvels at the journey that took her from a job wrapping porcelain dishes to doing so-called “man’s work” making bombers and fighter jets and from her home in West Virginia to Michigan and then California.

CONTINUE READING AT THE NY TIMES –>

AND if you need help conducting an interview, check out the StoryCorps National Day of Listening Campaign (its set for November 27, the day after Thanksgiving when all your relatives will be gathered together– what better opportunity). On the site you’ll find a Do-It-Yourself guide and even a question generator…

Opal Moore is a living legend.  One of our country’s original “Rosies”, she helped make flares as a welder during World War II.

‘Rosie the Riveter’
Moore reminisces about working in factories during war time

POSTED: September 6, 2009
By BRETT DUNLAP

PARKERSBURG – During World War II, Opal Moore was one of many women who entered the work force to do many of the jobs essential to America’s war effort.

Photo by Brett Dunlap

The Parkersburg resident reminisced about her time as one of many women nationwide nicknamed “Rosie the Riveter” for the work they did in factories on the home front.

A number of groups have been working to collect the stories of these women to preserve the memory of what they have done.

“Thanks! Plain and Simple” is a veterans group in West Virginia that has been working to collect the stories of “Rosies” from around the state.

Moore, 87, worked as a welder helping to make flares for the U.S. Navy at the Ames shovel plant in Parkersburg in the 1940s. Having been born in Wirt County, Moore, the former Opal Wright, came to Parkersburg to find work.

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I happily stumbled across this article at the Pop History Dig.  I say “happily” because I have never article more succint, more informative, or more delightful than the one which I am about to relate to you all.

It is, as was suggested by the title, ALL about Rosie the Riveter – the paintings, the posters, the song (did you know there was a song?), the campaigns for women workers, and loads of interesting little tidbits along the way.

For instance, did you know that Marilyn Monroe was once a real-life Rosie?  Well, she was, but you’ll have to read on to find out all about this, and loads more!

“Rosie The Riveter”
1941-1945

“Rosie the Riveter” is the name of a fictional character  who came to symbolize the millions of real women who  filled America’s factories, munitions plants, and shipyards during World War II.  In later years, Rosie also became an iconic American image in the fight to broaden women’s civil rights.

After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the full involvement of the U.S. in World War II, the male work force was depleted to fill the ranks of the U.S. military.  This came precisely at a time when America’s need for factory output and munitions soared.  The U.S. government, with the help of advertising agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, mounted extensive campaigns to encourage women to join the work force.  Magazines and posters played a key role in the effort to recruit women for the wartime workforce.

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“Women are trained to do precise and vital engine installation at the Douglas Aircraft Company plants, Long Beach, CA, October 1942.”

Photograph Courtesy of the Library of Congress