The character of “Rosie the Riveter”—as feminist symbol, World War II icon and mid-century heroine—is so ingrained in the American psyche that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that there was a time when Rosie didn’t, in fact, exist. In the early 1940s, though, as American women flooded the labor force in order to replace the millions of men who had gone off to war, a wide variety of songwriters, illustrators—like the Saturday Evening Post‘s Norman Rockwell—and photographers effectively invented the archetype on which all subsequent Rosies were based.
(Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller’s famous 1942 “We Can Do It!” poster, created for Westinghouse House and featuring easily the most famous and recognizable “Rosie” of them all, was not widely known during the war years, and only assumed its current, iconic status decades later.)
Among the photographers who documented this massive and, in a very real sense, revolutionary influx of female workers into traditionally male factory jobs—as welders, lathe operators, machinists and, of course, riveters—was LIFE’s Margaret Bourke-White.
A pioneer herself (one of LIFE magazine’s original four staff photographers, America’s first accredited woman photographer during WWII, the first authorized to fly on a combat mission, etc.), Bourke-White spent time in 1943 in Gary, Indiana, chronicling “women … handling an amazing variety of jobs” in steel factories — “some completely unskilled, some semiskilled and some requiring great technical knowledge, precision and facility,” as LIFE told its readers in its August 9, 1943, issue. The magazine went on to note:
In 1941 only 1% of aviation employees were women, while this year they will comprise an estimated 65% of the total. Of the 16,000,000 women now employed in the U.S., over a quarter are in war industries. Although the concept of the weaker sex sweating near blast furnaces, directing giant ladles of molten iron or pouring red-hot ingots is accepted in England and Russia, it has always been foreign to American tradition. Only the rising need for labor and the diminishing supply of manpower has forced this revolutionary adjustment.
The women are recruited from Gary and nearby East Chicago. A minority has drifted in from agricultural areas. They are black and white, Polish and Croat, Mexican and Scottish… The women steel workers at Gary are not freaks or novelties. They have been accepted by management, by the union, by the rough, iron-muscled men they work with day after day. In time of peace they may return once more to home and family, but they have proved that in time of crisis no job is too tough for American women.
Here, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures from the Gary mills in 1943, in the very midst of the Second World War. Here are portraits of individual women, pride shining from their faces, as well as characteristically marvelous Bourke-White shots of enormous machines, grease-lathered gears, powerful tools—photographs that capture the grit, grime and rugged, unexpected beauty of a factory and its workers in full production mode.
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk
Women laborers clear tracks of spilled materials, Gary, Ind. 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesWomen wearing gas masks clean a blast furnace top at a Gary, Ind. steel mill, 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesWomen employees at Tubular Alloy Steel Corp. in Gary, Ind. predominate at pep meeting, 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesBernice Daunora, 31, a member of a steel mill's "top gang" who must wear a "one-hour, lightweight breathing apparatus" as protection against gas escaping from blast furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesTheresa Arana, 21, takes down temperature recordings at draw furnaces, Gary, Ind., 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Stamping machine in rail mill at Gary is operated by Mrs. Florence Romanowski (right). She mechanically brands identifications into red-hot rails. Her husband is in Army.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Katherine Mrzljak, 34, is one of top gang. She is Croatian, has two children. Husband also works in mill.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesWomen welders, Gary, Ind., 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Scarfing is the operation which removes surface defects from slabs to condition them for rolling. Girl (center) marks out defects with chalk for man who is doing the scarfing (right).Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Beveling armor plate for tanks at Gary Works, these women operate powerful acetylene torches.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Audra Mae Hulse, 20, is flame cutter at the American Bridge Co. in Gary. She has five relatives in plant.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Lugrash Larry, 32, a laborer in Blast Furnace Department, has four children. Husband works in Billet Mill.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Lorraine Gallinger, 20, is metallurgical observer. She is from North Dakota, plans to return after war.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Blanche Jenkins, 39, is welder at Carnegie-Illinois, buys a $50 war bond each month. She has two children.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Flame cutting of a slab is done by four-torch machine controlled and operated by one woman. Alice Jo Barker (above) has a husband and son who also work in war industries.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Pan Man' at Gary Works is Mrs. Rosalie Ivy, a husky Negro laborer. She is mixing a special mud used to seal the casting hole through which molten iron flows from a blast furnace.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Transfer car operator Mae Harris, 23, signals crane man above to return the empty, hot metal ladle to the transfer car (left). The ladle has contained molten iron which has poured into an open-hearth furnace. In the furnace the molten iron is added to molten scrap which, together with iron ore and fluxes, results in finished steel after refinement.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Dolores Macias, 26, of Mexican descent, has a son. She has been a member of the top gang for five months.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Victoria Brotko, 22, is a blacksmith's helper. She took her twin brother's job when he joined the Marines.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Ann Zarik, 22, is a flame burner in Armor Plate Division. (Image of her appeared on issue's cover; see last slide)Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. In the foundry of the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Co., these women are at work as core-makers. A total of 18 women employed here on two shifts. The core-maker's functions are like those of a sculptor, and the implements used are trowels, spatulas and mallets. Castings being made in this picture are for use not only at Carnegie-Illinois but at other plants.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. On aircraft carrier deck women work as welders and scrapers. Girls alongside this steel prefabricated deck section who are without headgear and masks operate tools which scrape loose surface imperfections in preparation for welding. The welder in foreground has her name, 'Jakie,' written on helmet, a popular style note among lady welders.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Girl metallurgical observer uses optical pyrometer in determining temperature of steel in open hearth.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesLIFE magazine cover, August 9, 1943.Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
