ABSTRACT
On 29 May 1943, Norman Rockwell’s iconic image of the relationship between women, labour, and technology in the modern world appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post (Figure 4.1). Named after a popular song of the period, ‘Rosie the Riveter’ was a herald of the ways in which women, under the press of a war economy, were now held to be perfectly capable of assuming the heavy industrial tasks which had once been the preserve of those men who were now enlisted in the American armed forces. In Britain, America, and even more so in Japan and in Germany, occupations which formerly had been classifi ed as being either ‘male’ or ‘female’ were being redistributed.1
