Working for the War: Utah Women in the World War Two Workforce

BY ELIZA DURHAM,

BETTER DAYS INTERN

“Women are the last remaining important reservoir of labor.”^[1]

When the United States joined World War Two, Utah women’s roles increased in almost every area of the workforce as women stepped up to help their country. Like the national symbol of Rosie the Riveter, the women of Utah who entered the workforce during the war helped break down gender and racial barriers.

After the U.S. entered the war in December 1941, war-related industries revitalized the economy in Utah and the rest of the country, which had experienced high unemployment during the Great Depression. As men were needed in combat overseas, the resulting labor shortages motivated industries to employ women, people of color, and disabled workers at unprecedented rates. Women experienced the greatest increase in workforce opportunities during this time, especially after 1942, when the War Department approved hiring women for jobs previously reserved for male workers.

During the war, private companies enthusiastically sought contracts to receive compensation for producing goods and services for the war effort. In Utah, these included the Eitell McCullough Radio Tube Plan, the Geneva Steel Company, the Standard Parachute Company, and the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad yards. Military installations also boomed, providing many more jobs for Utah residents at the Ogden Arsenal, Hill Air Force Base, Clearfield Naval Supply Depot, Utah General Depot, Tooele Army Depot, and Kearns Army Base and Depot.

Over the course of the war, the number of women in the workforce almost doubled in the U.S, up to 19 million by the end of the war. In Utah, women constituted 17.6 percent of Utah’s paid labor force in 1940 and 36.8 percent by 1944. A Salt Lake Tribune article in 1943 observed: “Deftly and intelligently women have learned to handle the intricacies of various types of machines and gadgets. Attired in masculine pants and shirts, women may be seen busy on huge railroad locomotives, wiping jackets, and washing tanks and cabs. They serve as ship helpers, car cleaners, car icers, machine shop trainees, drilling and lathe workers, and even man electric turntables. . . . In fact, it would be difficult to find any masculine field that has not been invaded by the women of today.” ^[2]

By the end of 1943, Hill Air Field had become the largest civilian employer in Utah and a critical center for the national war effort. The base’s primary responsibility was to repair and provide parts for all military aircraft so that they could be used again for combat. The base’s motto was “Keep ‘em Flyin’ and Fightin’.” As demand for supply and maintenance increased, so did the need for workers at Hill. Employment advertisements emphasized the need for “men and women alike,” “both military and civilian,” declaring: “The war of maintenance and supply is at hand, the battle of repairs and of parts. It is the mission of Hill Field to help win this battle…Housewives and stenographers, clerks and agricultural workers, students and mechanics come here to enlist in this war, to be won only by organization, training, working.”^[3] During the war, women reportedly made up over half of the workers at Hill. They worked in a variety of indispensable roles, such as uniformed military service, clerical work, aircraft armament, military communications, military police, munition handling, aircraft maintenance, sheet metal work, welding, and aircraft engine repair.

Ruby Timms Price was one of the women working at Hill Air Field during WWII. When Ruby’s soldier brother went missing, Ruby was determined to join the war effort and ended up at Hill. There, she worked as an embarcation specialist. She was trained to plan, coordinate and execute the movement of equipment, supplies, and people using various modes of transportation. She was responsible for ensuring deployments went smoothly. Anna Belle Weakley moved to Utah when her fiancé got a job at Hill during the war. She worked in several jobs at the base, always looking for ways to do more and do better. She practiced typing and took the civil service examination three times before passing it to qualify for an office job. Ruby and Anna Belle, along with other women of color at Hill Air Field, encountered both gender and racial barriers and helped forge the path toward racial integration within the Utah workforce.

Throughout Utah, thousands of women entered the workforce to help in war production and other war-related industries. Zola Anderson worked at the Manti Parachute Plant sewing parachutes for military aircraft crews. She felt empowered not only through her higher wages but also through her contributions to her country. She later recalled: “I felt like I was doing some good for the men in the war. This way, we could help out too.”

Utah women also took on new roles in Utah’s transportation industry. Some became railyard workers, repairing locomotives and railcars as the military used trains to mobilize troops and supplies. Others found work driving heavy machinery. The Salt Lake Tribune described women driving in the Kearns Defense Depot motor pool this way: “Redheads, brunettes, blondes, greyheaded, young, older and middle-aged, widows, wives, mothers and grandmothers typify a most gigantic and far-reaching change in the field of labor as well as wholesale upheaval in modern feminine life.” The article highlighted a bronco buster, an opera singer, a professional softball player, and other “headliners among the women pioneers of the machine age, daring scouts far ahead on the trail,” who “gave up far better paying jobs to do their bit in this man’s (woman’s) war.”[4]

In addition to war production jobs, there was also a desperate labor shortage that women filled in nearly every part of the workforce to keep the nation running. While these jobs were not always directly tied to military production, they were critical to the larger war effort. As one Manti newspaper explained: “Many women have the idea that war work means being a ‘Rosie the Riveter.’ But a woman really can do just as much for her country if she takes a job as a telephone operator, works in a bank or accepts any other kind of employment which will help keep our domestic enterprises running and will relieve men for war production and for the armed forces. . . . And we should all remember that a girl who takes a job in a restaurant, in a store or driving a milkwagon is playing just as important a part in the war as a girl who learned to be a welder or riveter.”^[5]

The unprecedented numbers of women entering the workforce provided critical economic aid for the war effort and communities but also illuminated social and economic tensions and inequities. Challenges involving the persistent wage gap, childcare needs, discriminatory hiring practices, harassment, family stability, and social perceptions about women working outside the home raised concerns in Utah and throughout the nation. Many Americans were concerned about women working in more ‘masculine’ jobs, and both the military and private employers took great pains to describe how female employees still retained their femininity. For example, a newspaper article accompanying the photo at the top of this article included this description of railyard worker Ruth Olsen: “Engines hold no terrors for her as she gives a house wifely polish to a huge glass eye. Heavy gloves help her to keep her nail polish intact in spite of harsh labors.” (“Utah’s Rosies”)

There was also underlying tension over what would happen in the labor market after the war. Even though newspapers heralded women as “the last remaining important reservoir of labor,” they also acknowledged the “belief that after the war a majority of women will leave their drills, welding rods and cut-off tools and go back to their homes.”^[6] One article asked: “What if Rosie the Riveter won’t go home?”^[7] Prejudices about women working outside the home had been shuffled around, but not eliminated. Public officials, media, and community organizations like the Salt Lake Council of Women and the Relief Society increasingly encouraged working women to leave their jobs, emphasizing that “returning members of the armed forces must be given the opportunity to once more earn livelihoods for themselves and their families.”[8] While most “Rosies” in Utah and the U.S. did return home after the war, others remained in the labor force and shifted to more traditionally “women’s” jobs.

World War II had a dramatic economic impact on Utah. Entering the paid workforce in new ways, women found empowerment not only through the higher wages, independence offered by employment, and larger roles they had in the workforce, but also through their patriotism and contributions to the war efforts. These women played a crucial role in the war effort, helping the United States on its path to victory and paving the way for women’s greater economic participation in the future.

Eliza Durham is a BYU undergraduate student studying neuroscience, public health, and global women’s studies.

^[1] “Labor Day, 1943…,” Salt Lake Tribune (5 September 1943), 43.

^[2] Edna Draper, “Women Invading Man’s New War World,” Salt Lake Tribune (19 December 1943), 50.

^[3] “Road to Victory,” Hill Top Times (1 January 1943), 2.

[4] “Truck Driving, A Lady’s Job Now,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 5, 1943, 43.

^[5] “Rosie the Waitress,” Manti Messenger (15 October 1943), 8.

^[6] “Labor Day, 1943…,” Salt Lake Tribune (5 September 1943), 43.

^[7] “Post-War Questions,” San Juan Record (17 August 1944), 4.

[8] “Home, After the War,” Relief Society Magazine v. 31, n. 10 (October 1944), 570. See also “Women After the War–Will They Keep Working or Go Home?” Salt Lake Tribune (11 February 1945), 12.