“For Your Country's Sake Today, For Your Country's Sake Tomorrow” American WWII Poster

As many countries sought for any aid towards World War II efforts, governments began investing time and money into creating populist propaganda that would convince the common man that they owe and serve a specific purpose to the government during these times of crisis. Many of these posters used gender representation as a means to establish an ideal that citizens could relate or aspire to in order to demonstrate this idea of purpose. The poster “For Your Country's Sake Today, For Your Country's Sake Tomorrow” accomplishes this exact idea. 

Upon first glance, seeing multiple women in uniforms with a sense of authority, many would think that this poster is uplifting women and taking strides towards demonstrating women to be capable within the work force and important within the war efforts. Despite this initial impression, there are deep-rooted traditional gender stigmas that indirectly present themselves. The women stand tall with good posture and uplifted heads, wearing different types of uniforms. This does present these women as having purpose, being driven, and showing strength. This does counteract feminine stereotypes of aiming to be the traditional housewife and show purpose in having children and focusing on the family. Although, when looking at propaganda of their male counterparts, their strength is represented entirely different. In male-focused propaganda posters from the United States during this time, men are commonly shown weapons-in-hand, in-action, messy and rough around the edges.  These types of posters exude a sense of prosperity, physical strength, and bravery. These women are in full face of makeup with their hair perfectly done up; they stand tall but they are not showing true “manly” strength or ultimate sacrifice, but rather this sense of “feminine” submission and subordination. There are only women on this poster, demonstrating that the message only applies to women: a man's job is to be out on the battlefield and the women can fill in whatever roles are left over and are desperately in need of being done. They use this idea of nuance to deceive women that they are granted more freedom, but really this is not about the government wanting to treat women more fairly--they need the only people who can't fight to submit to the new purposes they desire be fulfilled. America associates this sense of femininity with patriotism to mask the fact that they are taking advantage of them without giving them the equal treatment and opportunities to contribute to the war in the way that a man could.