The Housewife's Battle on the Home Front: Women in World War II Advertisements

Abstract

A 1944 advertisement for Swift's Beef in Good Housekeeping boldly proclaimed, " Her SEVEN jobs all help win the war! " 1 The seven " jobs " were tasks that the Swift Company—as well as the U.S. government— believed that women on the home front should perform in order to aid their country during World War II. Among the tasks promoted by the advertisement were rationing, the growing of " victory gardens, " salvag­ ing and recycling, and the purchasing of war bonds. Though the advertisement claimed that these responsibilities " all help win the war, " each of the jobs described centered around household activities. Despite the fact that the Swift's Beef advertisement gave agency to American women by claiming they could impact the success of the war, it still emphasized their femininity by giving primacy to the roles of wife and mother and by utilizing an image of a Red Cross volunteer as their " war worker, " not a woman working in the war industry. The Good Housekeeping advertisement exemplifies how World War II advertisements not only frequently targeted American women to aid the war effort, but also placed the responsibility of obtaining vic­ tory in the hands of the housewife. To some, this may appear as a surprising contrast to the popular image of " Rosie the Riveter " that tends to dominate modern-day conceptions of the representation of American women during World War II. In this paper, however, I will argue that, although women were entering the workforce in large num­ bers during World War II, the U.S. government and the advertising industry believed American housewives to be as vital to the war's suc­ cess as " Rosie the Riveter. " While numerous scholars argue that housewives were a major contributing factor to America's victory in World War II, they often neglect the ways in which advertisements largely ignored the roles of working women during the war. World War II era advertisements and posters glorified and elevated the status of the housewife, which, I will argue, encouraged women to remain in a sphere of domesticity during, as well as after, the war. To fully comprehend the depiction of American women in adver­ tisements, it is important to look at advertisements created by both the U.S. government and private American companies during the war. T.J. Jackson Lears has used the term " hegemony " to describe the ways in which a particular ruling class relies on various intellectual groups to establish a society's conventional wisdom.