Canadian Social History

During World War II, Canadian women made significant contributions to the war effort on the military, industrial, and home fronts.  As historian Ruth Roach Pierson notes, “three services of the Armed Forces were opened to women” and “an unprecedented proportion of women left the domestic sphere to enter public employment and service.”  However, while massive war mobilization engaged women at unprecedented levels, the involvement of women in what were regarded untraditional gender roles caused discomfort amongst both Canadians and in particular the government.  Interestingly, in parallel to massive mobilization, the Canadian government initiated a propaganda campaign.  Central to this propaganda campaign were posters.  Inexpensive to produce, print, and distribute within a short period of time, the government also discovered that posters could convey messages to the general public more strongly and effectively than the written or spoken word alone.  Indeed, despite being essentially ephemeral objects, government-issued posters actually witnessed sustained exposure and heightened significance during wartime.  However, these posters were more than mere battle-cries to rally the troops.  Rather, these posters focused on traditional representations of masculinity and femininity.  As such, I would argue that posters became a means for the government to alleviate the concerns over the involvement of women in the war effort.  Instead of reflecting the reality of massive mobilization, these posters depicted traditional gender roles as the foundation for the war effort.  In this post, I will analyze the specific elements of these posters, focusing in particular on how concepts of masculinity and femininity were constructed.  Second, I will also explore how masculine and feminine characterizations and representations defined traditional gender, gender roles, and gender relations.  And finally, I will conclude with an analysis of how successful these posters were in alleviating the challenge to traditional gender roles caused by massive mobilization.

Visual Images and Historians

As visual historian Joshua Brown notes, “Our consciousness of the past is inextricably bound by pictures.”  However, a general overview of historiography reveals that historians deem pictures (whether they be illustrations or posters) inferior to the written or spoken word.  Indeed, most scholarly work fundamentally focuses on textual or oral based primary sources to provide evidential support to an argument.  And while on the occasion pictures are used, the main purpose is to supplement the historian’s existing thesis rather than being the central tenet to the argument.  I would argue that such a scholarly approach is a mistake.  Pictures, such as wartime posters, can provide historians a different insight than those of textual or oral based primary sources.  Pictures are a powerful medium that engage people differently than text or spoken word alone.  As such, an analysis of a picture can provide a new perspective previously unseen when solely relying on textual or spoken evidence.  But what should a historian do when analyzing a picture?

Analyzing Pictures – A Process

To analyze a picture is to start a process of asking specific questions about the presented image.  When analyzing wartime posters, start with questioning the actions of those in the poster.  For example, what is the main actor of the poster doing?  And what are the figures in the background doing?  The type of artwork used in the poster should also be considered.  Is the poster a pen or an ink drawing?  Is the image a photograph?  Despite being fundamentally image-based, wartime posters also contained text or cutlines.  A historian needs to ask what these cutlines say/mean?  In addition, historians should understand how the typeface used in cutlines influenced the message of the poster.  Of course, these wartime posters were created as propaganda, and as such the symbols and myths portrayed in the poster become important elements to understanding the message that is being conveyed.  By asking these questions, we can develop a fuller understanding of wartime posters and their influence on Canadian society.

Construction of Masculinity and Femininity

By applying this methodology, it becomes more apparent how the concepts of masculinity and femininity were  constructed in wartime posters.  For example, masculinity was characterized as courageous, heroic, fearless, honourable, and overwhelmingly patriotic.  In the “Let’s Go Canada!” poster (see figure 1), the main actor is a male soldier who is holding a bayonet and charging into war.  Behind the soldier is the union flag and on the soldier’s uniform is a badge with the word Canada emblazoned.  The image of a male soldier charging into war for Canada also appears in the “Canada’s New Army Needs Men Like You” poster (see figure 2).  This time, the soldier rides into battle on a motorbike, both a symbol of modernity (underlined by the cutline “Canada’s New Army”) and of physical power (the motorbike and its rider are depicted as muscle-bound with the strength to overpower the land – a clear attempt to address the concerns around the futility of no-mans land that demoralized soldiers in World War I).  The poster also depicts the mythology of the honourable and courageous male soldier, shadowing the motorbike is a medieval knight in shining armour gallantly riding horseback into battle.

While these posters of male soldiers combined patriotism with masculine characteristics of duty, strength, and fearlessness, posters that focused on women, characterized the relationship between femininity and patriotism as the polar opposite.  For example, in the poster “Keep these hands off! Buy Victory Bonds” (see figure 3), rather than fearlessly fighting the enemy, a mother and her child are depicted as vulnerable and weak in the face of the enemy.  In this poster, the artwork is crucial to understanding the message being conveyed.  The main female character, the mother, is drawn in soft tones implying a gentleness.  The child she is holding, also drawn in soft tones, is a newborn baby sucking on a pacifier.  In contrast, the enemy is portrayed as grotesque hands ready to snatch away the baby from the grasp of its mother.  As such, in this poster femininity is defined as nurturing and motherly, while at the same time vulnerable and weak.

Polar Opposites

Indeed, the polar opposite representation of the fighting male soldier and the vulnerable female mother can be seen as part of a larger attempt to use traditional characterizations of masculinity and femininity to define gender roles and gender relations on both the front line and the home front.  For example, posters such as “Whatever your job may be: Fight” (see figure 4) emphasized how the traditional role of men as breadwinners translated into soldiers fighting on the front line.  While posters such as “Your Shopping Basket Savings, Save More to Lend More” (see figure 5) stressed the importance of women as traditional housewives and frugal consumers, a role that supported the war effort on the home front.  Significantly, these posters also emphasized traditional gender relations.  As the poster “Until He Comes Back! Buy Victory Bonds” (see figure 6) illustrates, the role of the woman was to dutifully wait as a wife and mother until her husband returned from war.  In this poster, the husband is depicted in military uniform, his portrait framed on the wall behind his wife and child, symbolizing him as the head of the household.  Beneath the framed picture, is his wife and child, thinking about him and seemingly writing letters of support to him.

The Power of War Posters

So how successful were these posters in alleviating the challenge to traditional gender roles caused by massive mobilization?  As Ruth Roach Pierson notes, the mobilization of women for the war effort “was a clear case of state management of ‘human resources’.”  However, this management of “human resources” which seemingly had the potential to revolutionize gender roles in Canada failed.  As Roach Pierson adds; “The massive mobilization of women during the war years thus failed to secure them a genuinely equal place in the postwar public world.”  Indeed, after the war, “the older woman, the deserted wife or mother, or the woman whose husband earned too little or had no job remained in precarious positions.”  Despite the involvement of women in the military, industrial and home fronts, Canadian society returned to the gendered traditions depicted in wartime posters.  In fact, as Kristin Hulme notes in a recent study on women in the trades and industrial occupations, women today still “continue to be excluded from the trades and industrial occupations because of their gendered nature.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, while massive mobilization caused concern over the increasing involvement of women in untraditional gender roles, the Canadian government alleviated these concerns by using propaganda posters that depicted traditional gender roles as the foundation for the war effort.  I believe that historians asking why a gender revolution did not occur in post war Canada should analyze these propaganda posters to provide an answer.  Just as the wartime posters depicted Canadian success in the war based on traditional gender roles, notably Canadian society returned to traditional gender roles post war as if the contribution of women to the war effort was an apparition.  As such, rather than treat posters as supplementary evidence to support an argument, I believe historians should analyze wartime posters to understand gender, gender roles, and gender relations in Canadian society.

References

Ruth Roach Pierson, Canadian Women and the Second World War, Canadian Historical Association Booklet, No. 37 (Ottawa: 1983), 4, 26.

Joshua Brown, “Forum: History and the Web: From the Illustrated Newspaper to Cyberspace: Visual Technologies and Interaction in the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries,” Rethinking History, 8:2 (2004), 253.

James W. Cook, “Seeing the Visual in U.S. History,” The Journal of American History, 95:2 (2008), 434.

James N. Druckman, “The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate Revisited,” Journal of Politics, 65:2 (2003), 559-571.

Robert C. Williams, The Historian’s Toolbox: A Student’s Guide to the Theory and Craft of History (London: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), 164-165.

Kristin Hulme, “Making the Shift from Pink Collars to Blue Ones: Women’s Non-Traditional Occupations,” Labour/Le Travail, 57 (Spring 2006), 165.

Appendix

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