As a prelude to understanding why the Army would issue such a guide, one must recall President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proclamation, “In a profound sense it is a woman’s war. They are doing men’s jobs that men may be free to do the supreme job of beating the Axis. Women have played heroic roles in every crisis in our history, but no other crisis has so deeply threatened their freedom or so urgently demanded their strength.”

Director of the War Manpower Commission (WMC) Paul V. McNutt put the issue in more homely terms, “We can meet and solve the problem of manpower with womanpower. We shall need the housewife, the school girl, the college graduate – every woman whose family can possibly spare her. The more women we have in work the sooner we will win the war.”

The War Department was responsible for industrial mobilization and the Army Service Forces was put in charge of supervising and coordinating the placement of civilian workers on a national basis.  As a result, Army Service Forces commander Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell was charged with the task of actually putting civilian women to work. 

General Somervell’s reaction was to issue The Guide to the Immediate and Maximum Utilization of Civilian Womanpower.  He remarked, “Civilian labor shortages must be solved so far as possible by the maximum use of women and men not subject to military service…Serious interruption in production will be the inevitable result of failure to take adequate action in this respect…Commanding officers will adjust their procedures, policies and working methods in such a manner that women may be employed to the maximum extent compatible with efficiency. This will necessitate careful reappraisal of employment and production processes and cannot be considered solely upon the basis of present operating conditions [that is, the peculiarity of women must be taken into account].” 

The guide was issued by the Army Service Forces on November 10, 1943, and mirrored the male-dominated Army view of women as a distinct group of human beings who, unlike males, required all sorts of special consideration. For instance, the guide relates such prejudices as the inability of most women to understand a wartime emergency, their tendency to cause special workplace problems and other unfavorable traits (exact pages will be displayed in this series of columns reprinting the guide).

Accordingly, the guide opens with Industrial Personnel Division Director James Mitchell’s introduction describing its purpose (which, he assures us, is “not intended as a complete personnel program for women”). The first section of the guide, Preliminary Steps, covers the next three pages. The male perception that the very employment of women was apparent cause for alarm is underscored, “it is absolutely essential that foremen, supervisors and the employee representatives be advised of the necessity for the employment of women.”

Perceived employment-related differences between men and women are then emphasized.  For instance, women are deemed more difficult to classify for jobs; possess shortcomings in attitude (i.e., “face difficult problems of adjustment of their personal lives when they go to work”); have deficiencies in outlook (i.e., “less tolerant of the difference in housekeeping standards between their homes, on the one hand, and factory buildings on the other”); exhibit endurance problems; require workplace rearrangement, and necessitate job reorganization.

Safety issues and the need to “give special emphasis to safety” in putting women to work (i.e., “determining the facts of the job which can be performed safely by women”) reveal a recurring bias that women operate in an unsafe manner compared to men.  Nevertheless, employers are urged to “set wage rates based on equal pay for equal skill and performance,” a novel concept for the World War II era which was rarely granted.
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