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From The Militant, Vol. 6 No. 16, 18 April 1942, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The war into which the United States has entered is already displaying its “total” character with respect to women. The rapid induction of men into the armed forces has created a momentous problem for the ruling class – that of achieving a balance between the military and industrial personnel of the The war into which the United States has entered is already displaying its “total” character with respect to women. The rapid induction of men into the armed forces has created a momentous problem for the ruling class – that of achieving a balance between the military and industrial personnel of the country. The solution of that problem suggests itself: draw women into basic industry.
The full implication of this new and conscious involvement of great numbers of women in the vital branches of capitalist manufacture is not as yet clear either to the working class or to the capitalists. The latter, however, display a well-founded uneasiness at the prospect of having to cope with a vast new mass of “undisciplined” workers who are being taken into vital sections of American economy only to be shoved out and replaced if and when the male population is returned to its Usual industrial life.
The problems of war production have called forth all sorts of Institutions for hastening and organizing the induction of women into industry. The United States Department of Labor has conducted extensive investigations on the speed with which women can be trained to replace men and those firms receiving war orders have been prevailed upon to emphasize the hiring of women.
A survey of the aircraft industry indicates that 75% of the operations involved can be performed by women, and every large aircraft plant is moving toward the replacement of male by female labor. The Ford Willow Run bomber plant, for instance, has already hired, at least 15,000 women and, reports an ultimate 100,000 jobs for female labor in this plant alone. The government looks to England as a standard in this industry, where 40–50%; of aircraft workers are now women.
In another of the vital war industries, small arms manufacture, American industry looks to Wales as a model; there, 80% of the working force is female.
Diligent researchers have discovered that there is almost no field of industry into which women cannot be drawn, while maintaining the regular rate and quality of production, and that the replacement of men can extend from the least skilled operations of the mass production industries to the most highly skilled techniques – blue-print reading, shop mathematics, speeds and needs of cutting tools, use of scale and micrometers, radio physics, industrial chemistry, etc.
Indeed, it has been discovered that for some types of work, women are far better than men: such, for example, as drill press operation, winding coils and armatures, taping, painting, etc, where the painstaking, tedious work requires great patience and finger dexterity.
Training schools have been opened for women to hasten their entry into industry and conferences have been held between government representatives and the plants receiving war appropriations to insure an increased proportion of women employees.
Most important for our consideration are those types of employment which can use unskilled workers in great numbers and which therefore will result in the crystallization of a large female proletariat – unskilled, poorly-paid, insecure.
The change in the composition of the working class of the United States as a result of this process holds plenty of headaches for those sections of the capitalist class endowed with the power to see one step ahead, of today’s profits. The fear that the drawing of women into vital industry – in other words, the proletarianization of women – is a move which cannot be. unmade, and which will create a new kind of. female, gnaws at the subconscious mind of those up above.
Great slabs of propaganda are being handed out to put women in the right frame of mind. Women, according to this line of flattery, have moved “from the second line of defense workers to the front line.” Women are being admonished to remember that their, first, duty is to “cease reacting emotionally” (read, “cease making demands for a better living”) and to assume seriously the task of “guarding, the advantages of our democratic system of society.” In this connection it is interesting to note that, the women of England who make demands for improved conditions are soundly abused for “not taking seriously the responsibilities as well as the advantages of democracy.”
There is no better guarantee for the maintenance of real democracy than the development of a class-conscious female section of the proletariat. This war, itself a symptom of the dying past, will be an instrument for breaking the bonds of social oppression which have kept the masses of women prisoners in the narrow limits of the kitchen.
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