WiM Director Allison Grealis' Latest in the Huffington Post

Our good director Allison Grealis is a guest blogger for the Huffington Post.  Her latest piece was published today.  Here's the first few paragraphs -

The year was 1943. World War II had been raging for years already and it was beginning to take a devastating toll on the American home front. The draft created an impossibly severe labor shortage and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson knew that the road to victory could be paved only with more workers in American factories. "The War Department," he said, "must fully utilize, immediately and effectively, the largest and potentially the finest single source of labor available today -- the vast reserve of women power."

That quote was printed on one of the first pages of a pamphlet distributed to industrial employers as part of wartime efforts. I found the document titled simply and straightforwardly "You're Going to Hire Women" on Slate's history blog: The Vault. It is apparently going to become part of a new permanent exhibition at the National Archives.

Viewed in its entirety, the document is sometimes heartening -- "In some respects women workers are superior to men." -- and sometimes troubling -- "Women are pliant -- adaptable." But it speaks to the American mentality at the time and it offers some valuable observations still today.

"Women," the pamphlet concludes, "can be trained to do almost any job you've got."

On that point, I agree.

Read the rest of the post here.