The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win! (1943), a jobs list for the Employment Service

The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win! is OWI Poster No. 52, made in 1943 for the U.S. Employment Service. A woman in a red uniform handles a clear aircraft canopy part, and a box lists twelve other jobs, from farm worker to taxi driver (NAID 513676).

What the sheet prints

This poster sells a feeling, and it also carries a list. The archive describes a woman in a red uniform working with a transparent canopy section for an aircraft. Beside her a box names other work women were wanted for, and a last line points to the local employment office.

The more WOMEN at work

the sooner we WIN!

WOMEN ARE NEEDED ALSO AS:

FARM WORKERS · WAITRESSES · TIMEKEEPERS · LAUNDRESSES · TYPISTS · BUS DRIVERS · ELEVATOR OPERATORS · TEACHERS · SALESPEOPLE · TAXI DRIVERS · MESSENGERS · CONDUCTORS

— and in hundreds of other war jobs!

SEE YOUR LOCAL U.S. EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

[imprint:] OWI Poster No. 52. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D. C.

[imprint:] U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1943—O—517134

Who issued it

The Office of War Information issued it as No. 52 in its series, for the U.S. Employment Service. The record gives no artist. The badge on the worker's uniform reads "ZONE X TEMPORARY 0000"; the record does not say what it stands for.

How to read it

The archive tags it as card stacking and glittering generalities. The headline is the generality: a promise that more women working means an earlier victory, with no measure attached. The card stacking is in the list. A dozen ordinary jobs, and "hundreds" more, are offered as if they were the whole picture, with nothing on pay, hours, or child care.

Still, the list is the most useful thing on the sheet. It tells a woman that a bus route or a classroom counted, not only a rivet gun, and it sends her to a public office where she could ask and decide. That is an invitation to free choice in a labor market, and the sheet treats its reader as an adult who can weigh it. Other sheets on this site make the same case differently: We Can Do It!, from a private employer's committee, and the Navy's WAVES recruiting poster. See also the Office of War Information hub. The Roosevelt administration essay reads the Office of War Information inside the government that also signed Executive Order 9066.