Rebel Women of the West Coast by Rich Mole

Author:Rich Mole
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-926936-28-4
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Smile, girls!” And they did, because these wartime Victoria Machinery Depot employees were earning more money than they had ever earned before.

Royal BC Museum, BC Archives F-09694

The flood of women into the shipyards forced heavy industry to change the way work was conducted. Employees usually conform to worksites. This time, employers tried to conform to their employees in order to compensate for women’s limited work experience and physical strength. Jobs were redefined; ironically, this sometimes hindered women’s opportunities. A 1943 survey of 131 US plants revealed that more than half had no plans to advance females, the very employees General Motors’ president called “more enthusiastic and showing much better spirit” than men. Worst of all, women were denied interesting and higher-paid positions. Thousands were welders and cleaners, doing “women’s work,” but few were crane or drill operators. Some knew acting shy and retiring wasn’t going to get them those jobs. They let their bosses know what they wanted.

“I just thought it would be interesting to operate one of those big drills,” Alice Erickson, a low-level tack welder, remembered. She asked if she could try out for the job.

The drilling supervisor was caught off guard, saying, “I’ve never had a woman driller on my crew.”

“Well, I think I can handle it,” Alice said. She tried out and was hired, the first of her kind at Swan Island Shipyard in Portland, Oregon.

Others were allowed to do interesting work, but for a fraction of a man’s pay. Reva Baker became a weld inspector. Her supervisor was impressed. “He said he was gonna try to get me the title because it would be like a lead man’s title; it was a higher-paying job than a welding job. Well, he chickened out.”

Workplace rebels often had little luck changing sexist attitudes. “The average of them was pretty nice,” said Nona Pool, “but there was a lot of hardheads . . . and they thought that women were supposed to be pregnant and barefoot and ‘yes, sir.’ ”

So, if women were doing “men’s work” and making big bucks, who was minding the kids? In Oregon, it was Henry and Edgar Kaiser, the father-son industrialist team who built two major child-care centres along with their shipyards. Today, the reaction to this would be overwhelmingly positive, but in the 1940s, the innovative idea polarized communities. What the Kaisers saw as a solution to a production problem, some community daycare committees regarded as a threat to child rearing. The centres might make it too convenient for mothers to abandon their kids, especially mothers of very young children, who many felt had no business working. Initially, some mothers weren’t thrilled either, believing that nobody could bring up Betsy or Bobby like they could. Some worried about whom their youngsters would be playing with—and what colour they were.

To Henry Kaiser, the centres were an integral part of “the factory of the future,” embracing “shopping centres, food dispensers, banking facilities,” and a host of other services. The Kaisers hired the best child-care professionals and nutritionist in the country.

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