Between tanks and head scarves: domesticity and women's work in the posters of the US during the Second World War (1941-1943)

Abstract

During the Second World War, The American Way of Life crossed the American continent as a weapon, through an unprecedented advertising offensive. A powerful arsenal of images, prepared by different agencies of the US Department of State, was aimed at recruiting women to participate in the war effort, whether in their homes, in the front or in the manufacture of weapons. Through attractive civic values, war propaganda included in its repertoire different discourse resources, that would integrate the broad imaginary of a new form of domesticity. This research investigates, in an historical perspective, the use of gender as a resource for propaganda purposes, through the articulation between political elements and everyday life. This resource, usually take for granted when we refer to authoritarian governments, also shows its usefulness for democratic States, even in order to preserve a lifestyle attributed to the “free world”. Crossing primary sources, such as the famous American magazine The Reader's Digest - in its American and Latin American versions - and various propaganda posters launched by the United States Government during the Second War, these papers examine the way of the Government's self-representations built a complex ideological framework in which state affairs were interwoven with gender issues.