Promotional Displays, installed by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation, Portland, Maine, 1942-1945. Courtesy of the Maine Maritime Museum.
Promotional Displays, installed by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation, Portland, Maine, 1942-1945. Courtesy of the Maine Maritime Museum.
The wartime Manpower Commission began actively recruiting women in 1942. They launched advertising campaigns encouraging women into patriotic service by entering the workforce in place of their husbands, brothers, and sons.
The New England Shipbuilding Corporation took over this storefront window in Portland to show women the stages of training they would receive as they learned new trades in the shipyards.
Note the language on some of the posters still refers to the workers as male.