Sumant,

For the sake of accuracy I have to tell you that the woman you speak of as Rosie the Riveter is not her. The cellist, Geraldine Hoff Doyle, did quit working at an Ann Arbor plant a couple weeks after starting out of concern for her hands and musical talents. She claimed to have been the model for a poster advertisement by Westinghouse titled We Can Do It!.

At some point well after the war it was thought she was the famous picture of a woman standing over a lathe.

That picture however was taken at Alameda, California and is a woman named Naomi Parker Fraley, who along with her sister and another woman posed for another picture as well as the lathe picture.

Ms. Fraley and her son have produced the original newspaper article and the archives have the pictures clearly labeled with her name.

The misunderstanding is just one of those historical glitches that have worked into the common mindset.

I am not sure that the broad brush you paint women with of retroactively rewriting history is accurate, though I do agree that women and men of different eras are both responsible for the idea that women “have” to stay at home and not work outside the house.