Media Collection: In the Shipyards

Two women work together at the Albina Engine & Machine works. (Albina Engine & Machine Works collection, org lot 512)

New workers attend an orientation at the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation auditorium. (Oregon Shipbuilding Coll., 023349)

Rosalie Holder (left) signs up Betty Langston and Louise Brundage, duplicator's helpers for Albina Engine & Machine Works, for the "no work--no woo" campaign. Women and men in the company agreed not to date fellow employees who failed to turn in full timecards. (Albina Engine & Machine Works collection, org lot 512)

Fieger worked for Albina Engine & Machine Works in Portland, and she poses here for a publicity photo. In an effort to prevent absenteeism on the job, which cost the company time and money, Albina followed the example of other wartime industries and asked its workers to sign a national pledge to turn in full timecards. (Oregon Journal Collection, 020093)

Reheard and Bolen worked for the Kaiser shipyards on Swan Island as flame planer operators. (Oregon Journal collection, 000830)

Women were encouraged to compete in events like shipyard beauty contests, such as this one in the Vancouver Kaiser shipyard. The events were photographed and published in the employee newsletters. Some women enjoyed the events; others found them degrading because they had nothing to do with the work they were doing. Beauty contests--and other events that focused on women's looks--were part of the attempt by wartime industries to maintain gender distinctions at a time when being a man or a women meant very little on the job. (Courtesy Oreg. Hist. Soc. Research Library, 62883)

These two women are identified as a former teacher and waitress, both of whom left their jobs for the more lucrative work in the shipyards. (Albina Engine & Machine Works collection, org lot 512)

Brown worked for Commercial iron Works in Portland, and posed for this publicity photo for the company's campaign against absenteeism. (Oregon Journal Collection, 015292)