Westinghouse Electric: A Wartime Poster Finds Fame
Westinghouse Electric commissioned J. Howard Miller's wartime image of a woman beneath an encouraging slogan. Created in 1943, the poster addressed employees inside the company's factories, aiming to raise morale among women already working there. It is now among the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration. The image's broad public life came decades later, after rediscovery in the early 1980s. T-shirts, tattoos, coffee cups, and refrigerator magnets have carried it far beyond the workplace. A bobblehead doll and an action figure have also been produced. Its association with recruiting women into wartime jobs belongs to that later public understanding, rather than its initial purpose.
Corporate poster campaigns developed amid tensions between factory management and labor unions. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government called on manufacturers to produce greater quantities of war goods. Friction that had accumulated during the 1930s made workplace cooperation a concern for company directors. General Motors responded to a rumored union public relations campaign with a poster showing labor and management rolling up their sleeves together. Companies sought greater production by appealing to popular support for the war, while hoping to prevent the government from taking more control over manufacturing. Miller's factory posters emerged from this broader labor-management environment.
Miller had studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1939, and lived in Pittsburgh during the war. In 1942, Westinghouse Electric's internal War Production Coordinating Committee hired him through an advertising agency to make posters for workers. The project aimed to reduce absenteeism, direct questions toward management, and lessen the likelihood of labor unrest or a strike. Miller designed more than 42 posters, with each displayed for two weeks before the next replaced it. Most featured men and emphasized traditional gender roles. One showed a smiling male manager encouraging workers to bring questions about their work to their supervisor.
No more than 1,800 copies of the woman's poster were printed. The image measured 17 by 22 inches and was scheduled for two five-day work weeks beginning February 15, 1943. It appeared in several factories in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest. Those factories made helmet liners using Micarta, a phenolic resin developed by the company. Mostly women worked in that production, which yielded around 13 million liners during the war. The woman's collar badge identifies her as a Westinghouse Electric plant floor employee. Her red, white, and blue clothing added a patriotic appeal.
The wartime poster had no connection to the song Rosie the Riveter or Norman Rockwell's painting of the same name. Rockwell's image appeared on the Saturday Evening Post cover on May 29, 1943, and the magazine lent it to the Treasury Department for war-bond campaigns. Other Rosie images, often photographs of workers, circulated during the war. Miller's image disappeared for nearly four decades after its brief factory display. The Office of War Information's nationwide advertising campaign did not include it. Later copyright protection helped Rockwell's painting gain value while limiting reproduction; the lack of protection for Miller's image helped its eventual revival.
The poster resurfaced in a 1982 Washington Post Magazine feature about patriotic posters held by the National Archives. Feminist uses followed, interpreting its collective pronoun as women united against gender inequality. Smithsonian magazine placed it on its March 1994 cover. In February 1999, the Postal Service created a stamp based on the image with added wording about women's support for the war effort. A Westinghouse Electric poster also went on display at the National Museum of American History, among objects representing the 1930s and the following decade.
The question of the pictured woman's identity took a separate path. Geraldine Hoff Doyle saw a wartime factory photograph in 1984 and believed it showed her. After seeing the Smithsonian cover a decade later, she connected that photograph to Miller's painting and came to be widely credited as its inspiration. Professor James J. Kimble later obtained the original photographic print, whose caption identified the worker as Naomi Parker. The photograph belonged to a series taken at Naval Air Station Alameda in March 1942. Parker's photograph appeared in the Pittsburgh Press that July, but whether Miller used it as a model remains unconfirmed.
Later adaptations carried the image into advertising, entertainment, and electoral politics. Campaigners used it in support of Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, and Hillary Clinton in 2008. Clorox adapted it to advertise household cleaners, adding a wedding ring to the woman's hand. Artist Kristen Cumings made a large candy replica. After Julia Gillard became Australia's first female prime minister in June 2010, Melbourne street artist Phoenix placed Gillard's face into a monochrome version. A color version followed in March 2011; in January 2012, Phoenix added wording expressing disappointment with developments in Australian politics.