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Rosie the Riveter, Vera the Volunteer: Sexism, Racism, and Female Enlistment in World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2023

Alexandra Artiles Open the ORCID record for Alexandra Artiles [Opens in a new window] ,
Joana Treneska ,
Kevin Fahey  and
Douglas B. Atkinson Open the ORCID record for Douglas B. Atkinson [Opens in a new window]
Alexandra Artiles
Affiliation:
Florida State University, USA
Joana Treneska
Affiliation:
Youth Educational Forum, Austria
Kevin Fahey
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham, UK
Douglas B. Atkinson
Affiliation:
University of Salzburg, Austria
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Abstract

What influenced women to volunteer for service in the US military during World War II? Whereas previous literature focused on potential intrinsic and extrinsic individual-level motives, we consider the broader structural context that may have played a role in female volunteerism. We leverage original data containing information on all volunteers who served in the US Army during World War II, with detailed county-level economic, political, and demographic data, to explore patterns of female volunteerism in the military. Our findings suggest that racism and sexism played a role in female volunteerism in many parts of the country, which may have undermined the government’s goals of mobilizing the entire country in support of the war effort.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 383 - 389
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Artiles et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EFW7U8
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Artiles et al. supplementary material

Appendices A-D

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