Woman's place in war: Weather Observer, Army Air Forces is a 1944 Women's Army Corps recruiting poster signed Irving Cooper. A uniformed woman sights through a large theodolite against a cloudy sky, above a grey panel promising "239 kinds of jobs for women" (NAID 513708).
The portrait
A woman in uniform looks through a large theodolite, and the sky behind her is full of cloud. The archive describes the portrait as painted and signed by Irving Cooper, with an Athena medallion beside the Army Air Forces caption. A grey panel below carries the recruiting line.
Weather Observer
ARMY AIR FORCES
WOMAN'S PLACE IN WAR
The Army of the United States
has 239 kinds of jobs for women
THE WOMEN'S ARMY CORPS
[signature: Irving Cooper]
[imprint: P-[illegible]-RPB-1-25-44-[illegible]; Recruiting Publicity Bureau, United States Army]
Who issued it
The imprint names the Recruiting Publicity Bureau of the United States Army, and the archive credits the poster to the Army's Women's Army Corps. It is a full-size recruiting sheet aimed at the domestic public. Part of the imprint code cannot be read; the legible part carries the bureau initials RPB and the figures 1-25-44. How many were printed, where they hung, and how many women answered are all missing from the record.
A job, not a cause
The archive tags card stacking and transfer. The card stacking is the number. "239 kinds of jobs" sounds exact and generous, and the poster gives no list. The transfer is the setting: the Army Air Forces caption and the medallion lend the recruit the standing of the service, and the painting makes the work look calm and skilled.
Even so, the appeal is unusually concrete. Many recruiting sheets ask for a feeling. This one names a trade, shows the instrument, and says which branch uses it. A woman reading it in 1944 was being offered a skilled job with a title. The sheet recruits; it does not order, and she was free to walk past it. That is persuasion of the kind a free country can live with: the state states its offer and the citizen decides.
Compare Join the WAC Now, a 1944 sheet that offered recruits a choice of job, branch, and station, and the War Manpower Commission's There's Work to Be Done, which sent women to the U.S. Employment Service instead.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Woman's place in war: Weather Observer, Army Air Forces, 1944. U.S. Army, Women's Army Corps (Recruiting Publicity Bureau); signed Irving Cooper. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-260B, NAID 513708, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
