Union College Union | Digital Works Honors Theses Student Work 6-2012 The deI al Woman: The hC anging Female Labor Force and the Image of Femininity in American Society in the 1940s and 1950s Carlie Seigal Union College - Schenectady, NY Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Labor History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Seigal, Carlie, "The deI al Woman: The hC anging Female Labor Force and the Image of Femininity in American Society in the 1940s and 1950s" (2012). Honors Theses. 900. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/900 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Union | Digital Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Union | Digital Works. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Ideal Woman: The Changing Female Labor Force and the Image of Femininity in American Society in the 1940s and 1950s by Carlie Seigal Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Department of History UNION COLLEGE June, 2012 Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..iii-iv Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………………...1-19 Chapter 2: American Women During World War II…………………………………………20-37 Chapter 3: The Cold War and its Effects on American Women……………………………..38-71 Chapter 4: The End of Nostalgia and Rigid Gender Roles for American Women…………..72-89 Chapter 5: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..90-98 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...99-102 ii ABSTRACT SEIGAL, CARLIE The Ideal Woman: The Changing Female Labor Force and the Image of Femininity in American Society in the 1940s and 1950s In 1943 the image of Rosie the Riveter personified what the ideal American woman was supposed to be.