Women in the War—We Can't Win Without Them.

Washington D.C.: US Govt. Printing Office, 1942. Colour poster (28 x 40 in). Professionally mounted, glazed, and framed using archival materials. Original creases from folding, bright and fresh. Excellent condition. An important Second World War poster promoting women in the wartime workforce, produced in 1942 by the War Manpower Commission. At the time, "Women in the War" was one of the most widely distributed images of a woman laboring in war production, unlike the "We Can Do It" poster, which was produced only for Westinghouse plants during a few weeks in 1943 and did not become iconic until the 1980s. "Among the many agencies President Roosevelt had created during the war was the War Manpower Commission, formed in April 1942 to oversee war labor issues in the military, industrial, and civilian sectors. And in June 1942, the Office of War Information was formed to manage the flows of news and propaganda about the war to the public. By 1943, when the labor shortage was most acute, the two agencies worked together in concerted campaigns, targeting employers to hire women and women to become 'production soldiers'" (Yellin, Our Mothers' War, p. 44). Women labouring in factories, even in the service of the war effort, was controversial, with only 30 percent of husbands giving unqualified support to the idea of their wives performing such jobs. "Despite the tide of public opinion against working wives, War Manpower Commission director Paul McNutt had a strategy for quelling opposition: 'The money appeal will continue strong,' he said in 1943, but we'll concentrate on patriotism'. Sure enough, all across the country, the public was bombarded with spirited print and radio ads, magazine articles, and posters with slogans like 'Do the Job He Left Behind' or 'Women in the War—We Can't Win Without Them' depicting noble, pretty but serious, female war workers on the job... The campaigns glamorized war work, always showing that women could maintain their femininity and still be useful" (Yellin, pp. 45-46). Examples of this important poster are held at numerous institutions, including the Library of Congress, Imperial War Museum, MOMA, and the Pritzker Military Museum. Copies in such beautiful, unused condition are uncommon in commerce.