REAL-LIFE ROSIE The contributions of the Rosies were slowly forgotten after the war, and they were never properly recognized.
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Gold Congressional Gold Medal honors real ‘Rosie the Riveters’ BY Janis Hashe
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hyllis Gould is now 99. But she was only 20, married and with a baby, when she went to work in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond as a welder, becoming one of an estimated six million American women who fulfilled vital roles in the effort to win World War II. Website history.com records that between 1940 and 1945, the percentage of women in the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to 37 percent. Phyllis was not the only member of
her family who became what came to be called a “Rosie the Riveter.” Her sister, Marian Sousa, now 94, moved down in 1942 from the family home in Oregon, first to help her sister with childcare, then, after completing a six-week course in engineering drawing at UC Berkeley, taking a job at the shipyards revising blueprints. She made $35 a week, “which was a good salary in those days,” she said. Eventually, Phyllis and Marian were joined by another sister and their mother, who also became Rosies.
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