Slacks and Calluses is a story about two school teachers, Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen, who have decided to work in a bomber factory during the summer. Although Bowman does not specifically say, the story she writes shows the reader how working-class women were viewed and treated during World War II. Working-class women lived with the stigma of inferiority and were labeled the lowest of the social classes. Men viewed them as unintelligent, sex objects while other women ostracized them for their non-compliance to the existing view of femininity. Despite the stigma of being women in a place made for men and not being homemakers, Bowman and Allen felt it was their patriotic duty to spend their summer building bombers. In the 1940s, working-class women were viewed as inferior to men. They were not valued for their intelligence; instead, they were valued for what they could do for the man. When Constance Bowman was given her first task of loosening a bolt and she asked Mr. MacGregor, her leadman, how to use a ratchet, she “could hear something inside him saying ‘Women’ disgustedly” (Reid 32). Men viewed women as only being good for their eye candy. This is why the bomber factory required women to wear hair coverings and caps. They did not want …show more content…
Although it was a story about two individual women, it gave a preview of how all women were viewed by society. Working-class women were viewed as inferior to men. Men thought that women were only good as home makers and eye candy. They did not believe women in slacks should be treated like ladies. People also thought Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen would not be very useful in the bomber factory because they were school teachers. Despite the opposition, Bowman and Allen went to work at the bomber factory because of their sense of patriotism. Other women worked at the factory in order to provide for their