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Week Ending June 4, 2004

House Concurrent Resolution 413 Honoring the contributions of women, symbolized by “Rosie the Riveter” who served on the homefront during WWII.

BRIEF

  Congress finds 6,000,000 women worked in the homefront industries during WWII to produce the ships, planes, tanks, trucks, guns, and ammunition crucial to achieving an Allied victory. The women worked in positions commonly held by the men who were now overseas in the military. They worked as welders and riveters, engineers, designers and managers.

   The jobs were no less, in fact probably more, dangerous than they are today but performed with skill and dedication to produce needed equipment quickly and efficiently.

   Congress concludes that the women devoted their hearts and souls to their work to assure safety and success for their husbands, sons, and other loved ones on the battle front while demonstrating the needs of working mothers for child care programs, leading to  public acceptance of early child development and care outside the home.

   Their needs also led to the first employer-sponsored prepaid and preventative health care never before seen in the United States.

   All of this, as Congress sees it, is typified in the symbolic “Rosie the Riveter” icon created during WWII and in 2000, Congress recognized the national significance of the industrial achievements on the homefront during World War II and the legacy of the women who worked in those industries through the establishment of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, as a unit of the National Park System.

   Congress, then, honors the extraordinary contributions of the women whose dedicated service on the homefront during World War II was instrumental in achieving an Allied victory and recognizes the lasting legacy of equal employment opportunity and support for child care and health care that developed during the ``Rosie the Riveter'' era; and calls on the people of the United States to take the opportunity to study, reflect on, and celebrate the stories and accomplishments of women who served the Nation as ``Rosies'' during World War II.

Sponsor: Representative Shelly Moore Capito (D-WVA)

Vote: Passed House by voice vote.

Cost to the taxpayer: No discernible cost. ## All Rights Reserved. No reproduction in any form without written permission from TheWeekInCongress.com