A Bit About Rosie

"Rosie the Riveter" inspired a social movement and a legacy.

The number of working American women from 12 million to 20 million by 1944, a 57% increase from 1940.[citation needed] By 1944 only 1.7 million unmarried men between the ages of 20 and 34 worked in the defense industry, while 4.1 million unmarried women between those ages did so.

What unified the experiences of these women was that they proved to themselves (and the country) that they could do a "man's job" and could do it well.[24] In 1942, just between the months of January and July, the estimates of the proportion of jobs that would be "acceptable" for women was raised by employers from 29 to 85%.
Women quickly responded to Rosie the Riveter, who convinced them that they had a patriotic duty to enter the workforce. Some claim that she forever opened the work force for women.

The long-range significance of the changes brought about by the war provided the foundation for the contemporary woman’s movement.Leila J. Rupp in her study of World War II wrote "For the first time, the working woman dominated the public image. Women were riveting housewives in slacks, not mother, domestic beings, or civilizers."

In 2014 a nationwide program, run by the organization Thanks! Plain and Simple, was founded to encourage cities to pick a project that "Rosies" can do with younger generations, in order to educate young people about women’s roles in World War II, and to involve the "Rosies", many of whom have become isolated as they have gotten older, in community projects.