Yoon How Archives Shape Perceptions of Women's Labor

Collection Items

ItemStill Image1940sArchival framing...10 more
The more women at work the sooner we win! Women are needed also as [...] See your local U.S. Employment Service.

The 1943 Office of War Information poster features a woman in a bright red uniform working on what appears to be an aircraft canopy. Her calm and focused expression suggests confidence and skill. The bold title declares, "The more WOMEN at work the sooner we WIN!" Below, a list of occupations (such as farm worker, typist, bus driver, laundress, and others) encourages women to join many sectors of the wartime economy. The poster presents women's labor, whether in factories or service roles, as a patriotic act essential to victory.

Interpretation Note
This poster is a clear example of how state institutions actively shaped public memory of women's wartime roles by promoting certain stories about women's wartime labor while leaving out others. As Kenneth Foote argued, collective memory is built through selective emphasis, since societies often highlight specific events or meanings and downplay the aspects that do not fit the message they want to project. In this case, the Office of War Information presents women's work as a unified patriotic effort that is essential to national victory. The poster's clear slogan and orderly list of occupations support a motivating narrative. What falls outside that frame, such as the exhaustion, unequal pay, racial segregation, childcare struggles, or the abrupt layoffs women faced after the war, simply does not appear. Foote reminds us that this kind of selective emphasis is common in the formation of cultural memory, where representations produced by institutions determine which versions of the past circulate widely and which are allowed to fade. In choosing to emphasize patriotism, duty, and contribution over the difficulties and inequalities that shaped women's actual working lives, the poster helped define how an entire era would later be remembered.

ItemStill Image1940sArchival framing...12 more
Untitled Photograph of Women Factory Workers Attending Sunday Mass After Overnight Shift, Buffalo, New York
This 1943 photograph by Marjory Collins shows women factory workers attending morning mass in Buffalo, New York, immediately after completing the overnight third shift. They sit and stand in the dim interior of a church, their coats are still on, and their scarves are tied tightly around their heads. These suggest exhaustion and the cold of early morning. This photograph shows a moment of transition between industrial labor and religious service, making clear how wartime work schedules shaped daily life for women employed in defense industries.

Interpretation Note
Collins' photograph offers a counter-narrative to the polished images of wartime labor circulated by the Office of War Information. Instead of depicting heroic productivity, this photograph shows fatigue, ordinariness, and the effort to maintain community and spiritual continuity amid punishing hours. The women's quiet postures echo Kate Eichhorn's point that some of the most revealing traces of women's history appear in the ordinary moments and materials that official narratives tend to ignore. In that sense, the photograph functions much like the feminist archives Eichhorn describes, because it shifts attention to lives usually kept at the margins and shows that even everyday acts can speak volumes about the pressures women faced. Ultimately, Collins' photograph reminds us that women's work in defense plants was a patriotic duty, but it was also a grueling cycle that reshaped home life, religious practice, and whatever small pockets of rest remained.

ItemStill ImageArchival framingArchival silence...12 more
Little Spinner in Globe Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia. Overseer said she was regularly employed.
This photograph, taken by Lewis Hine for the National Child Labor Committee in 1909, shows a young girl standing between two long rows of spinning machinery in the Globe Cotton Mill in Augusta, Georgia. She is wearing a work apron and boots, her clothes are dusty with cotton lint, and her posture is still as she faces the camera. The mill floor is littered with fibers, and the narrow aisle shows the confinement of the workspace. The original caption records the overseer's remark that she was "regularly employed," which presents her labor as routine within the operations of the mill.

Interpretation Note
Hine's photograph serves as both image and argument. At first glance, it simply shows a young girl at work in a factory, while the caption that says "regularly employed" uses institutional language to make child labor exploitation look routine and even respectable. By quoting the overseer's own words, Hine lets the justification speak for itself, exposing how employers normalize the practice of child labor, even as the photograph itself contradicts every syllable of that claim. This tension fits with Marlene Manoff's point that archival labels and descriptions affect how evidence is read, so the wording attached to the photograph carries as much weight as the photograph itself. It also echoes Saidiya Hartman's observation on the archive of marginalized people, as the girl's experiences and circumstances are absent, replaced by the overseer's authoritative framing. By placing the photograph and the caption together, Hine's photograph invites us to ask who gets to define labor, whose narratives are preserved (and whose are excluded), and how those decisions that were made long ago still influence the way future viewers understand women's and children's industrial labor in industrial settings.

ItemStill ImageArchival framingArchival silence...11 more
Whistle blows noon Opelika Cotton Mill. Smallest girl in photograph is Velma Smith a tiny little spinner with a steady job all day. I found her at home crying bitterly because her father refused to let her have any money out of the pay envelope she brought home. Mother said: "That hain't no way to encourage children to work." Mother, father and several children work. Her mother admitted she worked here before 12 years old, and at Ella White Mill and one other city for about a year. Says they have no family record, but claims Velma is 12 now (which is doubtful). I saw her several times going and coming at 5:45 A.M. and noon. Location: Opelika, Alabama.
This 1914 photograph by Lewis Hine shows workers leaving the Opelika Cotton Mill in Alabama at the noon whistle. Among them is Velma Smith, identified by Hine as "a tiny little spinner with a steady job all day." The image shows Velma running toward the camera while adult workers move past her. Hine's caption provides extensive detail. Velma's father refused to let her keep any of her own wages. Velma's mother had worked in mills before age 12, and multiple members of the family were employed at the mill. The caption also notes that Velma was seen starting work before dawn and suggests that her claimed age of 12 was likely falsified.

Interpretation Note
This photograph presents industrial labor as a family economy structured by dependency and necessity. At first glance, the scene appears almost ordinary, with workers leaving for a break and a child running. However, Hine's caption turns it into clear evidence of generational exploitation. His narrative draws attention to the economic pressures that bound entire families, even very young children (likely under 12), to mill work. Details in the caption about withheld wages, uncertain ages, and shifts that began before dawn show how mills and families together shaped a child's working life. Terry Cook suggests that archives grow out of the social pressures and assumptions of their time, shaping what gets saved and how people make sense of it. With that in mind, Hine's photograph feels like a product of its own system that turns the ordinary routines of mill work into proof of the social and economic conditions he wanted to expose. The photograph also hints at how child labor was viewed then, since Velma's job is shown as normal work rather than as a loss of childhood or schooling. Altogether, it shows how records created within a certain worldview can end up supporting the accepted ideas about labor in early 20th-century industrial settings.


ItemTextActivism and civic laborArchival framing...9 more

Mobilizing Woman-Power

Harriot Stanton Blatch’s 1918 book Mobilizing Woman-Power, with a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt, calls on American women to see World War I as their war too. She insists they must step forward “as equals working with equals for a common end.” Victory, she argues, now hinges on fully mobilizing women’s labor to replace the men lost to enlistment and immigration restrictions. Drawing on the example of British and French women who had already taken up industrial, agricultural, and administrative jobs, Blatch demands that American women prove themselves just as capable. She pushes for practical state support, such as dormitories, canteens, and fair wages, because decent conditions are the only way to sustain long-term productivity. Throughout, she reframes traditional domestic skills in civic and industrial terms: efficient household management, she says, is exactly the kind of disciplined labor a nation at war needs. 

Interpretation Note
This book shows how wartime rhetoric transformed the cultural meaning of women's labor. Everyday domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and nursing were suddenly framed as indispensable national service. By celebrating British and French women who entered factories, farms, munitions plants, and offices, Blatch reframes the simple act of showing up to work as proof of women's fitness for full democratic citizenship. The book urges readers to see their own labor as a patriotic contribution and themselves as active citizens whose efforts sustain the nation. In this respect, Blatch anticipates that public discourse shapes people's sense of their civic obligations. Although Blatch demands equal pay and safer conditions, she continues to frame women's work as a noble sacrifice rather than an inherent right. She valorizes traditionally feminine skills as important wartime resources without ever questioning why such work was gendered female in the first place. The tasks themselves get public prestige, yet the underlying sexual division of labor stays intact, and no one thinks to question why certain kinds of work were deemed feminine to begin with. This places Blatch's book in an intermediate position within the exhibition. The exhibition first asks how women's labor is transformed into a patriotic duty. Then, it explores how it can become feminist activism. Blatch occupies the middle ground. Her narrative is also noticeably selective. The women she holds up as exemplars are nearly always white and middle-class, who are the ones who moved into jobs vacated by enlisted men. Black domestic workers, rural women, and immigrant laundresses' toil predated the war, but in Blatch's account, their contributions are invisible. In the end, this book shows how wartime language can turn women's work from a private duty into a public service, yet leave the basic gender hierarchy in place. It also underscores that the voices in that story shape whether women's labor leads only to patriotic production or moves toward real activism.


ItemTextArchival framingArchival silence...12 more
Chain Gangs of Georgia: A Shameful State of Affairs Which the Legislature is Called Upon to Remedy.
This newspaper article in the Union Recorder (Milledgeville, GA), published in November of 1895, reports on Governor Atkinson's 1895 investigation into Georgia's chain gang system. The report describes 33 convict camps holding 795 people, including both Black and White prisoners and multiple women and girls, some under 14. The article lists daily labor assignments such as farming, sawmilling, brickmaking, turpentine work, and road construction. It notes that prisoners often worked ten hours per day and that racial and gender segregation was rarely enforced in work or sleeping quarters. Although the article frames these conditions as an administrative failure requiring legislative reform, it documents the routine exploitation of forced labor under the misdemeanor convict system.

Interpretation Note
The article presents the chain gang system as an administrative shortcoming rather than as a moral or racial catastrophe, one that can be tidied up with the right legislation. In doing so, it shows how institutional language can blunt the edges of violence and turn brutality into a mere "affair to remedy." The recitation of prisoners' ages, races, and daily tasks tacitly normalizes forced labor and sidesteps the systematic exploitation of Black men, women, and children. The casual mention that women and girls worked the same grueling jobs as men, such as ten hours of brickmaking or road building, while still being expected to cook and clean for the camp, reflects how deeply race and gender dictated the distribution and meaning of labor in these spaces. Following Marlene Manoff's thinking, the article is both a historical object and a product of an archival logic that prefers bureaucratic categories over lived human experience. When read alongside Tonia Sutherland and Zakiya Collier's work on Black archival practices, it becomes clear that records of Black labor were almost always shaped by the state's need to legitimize punishment and control. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman, the archive is shaped by the people who exercised violence, not by those who endured it. What remains are documents produced by captors and officials, which means the record is built from a perspective of power rather than from the lives of those who were exploited.

ItemStill ImageArchival framingArchival silence...13 more
"Domestic" and Grover & Baker sewing machines, and "Domestic" Fashion Rooms, 1111 Chestnut St., Phila. [graphic] / Photo. by R. Newell & Son, 626 Arch St.
This 1879 stereograph by R. Newell & Son depicts the interior of Francis M. Johnson's sewing-machine showroom at 111 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Rows of Domestic and Grover & Baker sewing machines fill the space, surrounded by mannequins in finished dresses and children's clothes. Thread displays, patriotic bunting, and small signs reading "Please do not handle" all signal that this is a curated commercial stage rather than a site of actual labor. The showroom sells sewing machines as modern household technologies and emblems of national progress.

Interpretation Note
This stereograph does something sly, which is taking the back-breaking, poorly paid labor of sewing and turning it into something almost magical to look at. Every garment is draped perfectly, every machine is polished to a shine, and the patriotic bunting overhead is turning the room into a shrine of progress. The whole scene is arranged for middle-class shoppers to admire, not for anyone to imagine actually sitting down and working. Classification does heavy ideological work here. By ordering the space this way, the photograph sells a marketable story about women's work while leaving out the long hours, dim rooms, aching fingers, and low wages most seamstresses lived with. The mannequins drive the point home. They wear the finished dresses, but no tired, living woman is allowed in the picture. That absence is exactly the kind of archival silence where the lived conditions of working women are replaced by an illusion of effortless domestic modernity. In the end, commercial photography, like any genre, gets to choose whose labor counts as visible. Here, the machines and the pretty clothes stay on display, while the women who made them possible simply disappear.

ItemTextArchival framingArchival silence...10 more
Domestic Service
Lucy Maynard Salmon's Domestic Service is a 1901 investigation of women's household labor as part of the broader American economy. The book draws on more than a thousand surveys collected in the late 1880s from employers and workers, and documents wages, skills, national origins, living arrangements, and working conditions. The author outlines three major historical phases of domestic labor. The colonial period is when most household work was performed by enslaved people, indentured servants, or the very poor. After the Revolution, when free labor became more common and households briefly imagined themselves as more egalitarian.  By the mid-19th century, new immigrants, especially Irish, German, and Swedish women, entered domestic service in large numbers, making the work more widespread but lowering its social status. Salmon's data shows that most workers lived in cities, worked long hours with limited freedom, and earned an average of about $3.23 per week, often supplemented with room and board rather than full wages. Employers often treated household labor as personal labor rather than paid work, and employers had little power to negotiate conditions. Salmon proposed reforms, including abandoning the term "servant," ending tipping, dividing household tasks into defined roles, and establishing training schools to recognize household management as a skilled profession.

Interpretation Note
Salmon's study plays an important role in understanding how written records define women's labor. By converting lived experiences into surveys, tables, averages, and typologies, Salmon exposes domestic labor as economic labor governed by the same principles as factory or farm employment, which opposes the widespread belief that household work was merely women's natural duty. Yet, her methodology also demonstrates the trade-offs of institutional documentation. The precision of her statistics gives domestic labor new legitimacy, but the process of abstraction can smooth over the emotional, interpersonal, and racial dynamics that shaped daily life inside employers' homes. In this sense, Salmon's work echoes Saidiya Hartman's point about how the archive can make people visible while still muting their voices, since the workers appear as data rather than as narrating subjects. Her historical timeline shows how race and class determined which workers' stories were preserved and which were sidelined. Enslaved Black women, indentured servants, and immigrant workers played a pivotal role in the development of domestic service, yet their voices appear only through employers' accounts or through Salmon's own categorizations. The book demonstrates how genre (in this case, a sociological survey) can validate women's work by recognizing its economic value in the broader national economy, while also repeating the same hierarchies and omissions that define the archive.


ItemStill Image1940sAmerican Red Cross...10 more

Red Cross volunteer nurse's aide--Enroll today as a Red Cross volunteer nurse's aide--Your help can ...

This 1943 Red Cross recruitment poster features an idealized young nurse's aide. A fresh-faced, perfectly groomed young nurse's aid stares out, and she seems calm and determined. Large block letters urge women to "ENROLL TODAY... YOUR HELP CAN SAVE MANY LIVES." By framing volunteer caregiving as vital to national defense, the poster turns these civilian aides into quiet home-front heroes and presents care work as the natural and almost inevitable extension of feminine patriotism and sacrifice.

Interpretation Note
This poster is a perfect example of how wartime visual culture redefined care work. Factory recruitment posters at least talked about production quotas and (sometimes) paychecks. Red Cross posters were different in that they turned nursing and caregiving into pure patriotic duty, and as something women should feel honored to do for free. Tony Bennett's work on cultural institutions as disciplinary spaces fits here exactly. This is not just an advertisement telling women to sign up, but rather it's training them to see unpaid care as the highest expression of feminine citizenship. The serene portrait does half the work, as it projects effortless grace and hides the grueling shifts, the training, and the emotional weight that real aides carried. By praising volunteer sacrifice and never mentioning skill or compensation, the poster repeats a very old script, which is that women's caring labor is noble but somehow not quite "labor." In the context of the exhibit, this piece shows how recruitment posters could lift care labor into the realm of national heroism at the same moment it kept that labor unpaid and "natural." That double move is what Bennett helps us see in the power of institutional images.