Life Magazine, January 3, 1955, p16.

Pennsylvania Railroad Advertisement, Time Magazine, September 13, 1943, p 66.

These two images, taken over a decade apart from two different general interest magazines, Time and Life, display that although women were able to enter during World War II; the home remained the place where women could best display their femininity. The Life image displays an ideal middle class housewife of the 1950s. She is preparing a party with her daughters while her husband reads to their son in the background. By showing two generations of women enjoying this idyllic scene, the photo reinforces the belief that a woman’s primary role was in the home, serving as a loving wife and mother. The contrast between the daughters helping their mother and the son reading with his father shows the next generation being trained for their future roles in society; the daughters will succeed their mother in the home while their brother will become like their father, working outside the home and relaxing inside of it.

During the postwar period the home was the ideal place for a woman; however during the war she needed to serve her country. Although incapable of fighting in the military, women were needed to fill the jobs men left behind. On the surface the Pennsylvania Railroad advertisement from Time, depicting women working on the rails, appears to contradict the family image. Women are working on the rails while men are away at war, and the central figure is a woman who is as strong and capable as any man. However, this woman has almost become a man; her feminine features are downplayed while masculine ones are emphasized. Even her clothes, overalls and a flannel shirt, were traditionally worn by men in contrast to wife in the Life photo who wore a dress and jewelry. The worker needed to become a man because under normal circumstances a woman would be unable to meet the rigorous demands of working on the railroad. War forced men out of the workforce and the women who replaced them need to overcome their feminine weakness. While affirming the ability of women to fulfill important jobs during the war, the Pennsylvania Railroad advertisement called on them to become men, displaying the same belief of the different roles men and women should play in American society, a belief which was displayed more directly in the Life photograph taken a decade later. Although the idealized place of woman had changed from the workplace during the war to at home after the war, this shift was mostly the result of the necessity of women to entire the workforce during the war rather than a wholesale change of opinion after World War II had ended.